Research supported by grants from the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Science Foundation. (DD)

Research supported in part by a United States Public Health Service Grant from the National Institute of Mental Health. (VM)

Analyzes concept formation in children based on the precepts of general semantics. (RB)

The results demonstrate a use of semantic information to circumvent an item-by-item search of memory. Similar results have been obtained in the fact-retrieval paradigm of long-term memory. (PN)

Preschool- and kindergarten-age children's understanding of the distinct referential properties of collective and class nouns and the relationship between this understanding and performance in part-whole comparison tasks was examined in three experiments. Results indicate children understand the relationship between nouns and the sets to which…

Normal and learning disabled children were presented with visual and auditory items for free and cued recall. Deficits in semantically cued recall for children with one impaired modality originated at presentation time, perhaps because of separate pathways linking the auditory and visual modalities to the semantic system. (Author/RD)

Reports on four experiments exploring the relationship between decision difficulty and subsequent retention. (Author/AM)

The extent to which an orienting activity exerts control over the encoding process was studied. Two experiments were reported in which associative meaningfulness was varied under conditions of semantic and nonsemantic processing. Both experiments showed effects of meaningfulness following both semantic and nonsemantic tasks. (Author/MH)

Trace strength was examined as a function of single and spaced-multiple encodings within and across the orthographic, acoustic, and semantic domains. Recall results revealed that multiple encodings yielded additive or greater than additive retention effects while the recognition accuracy results revealed additive or less than additive effects.…

Theoretical/empirical foundations on which reaction times are measured and interpreted are discussed. Models of human information processing are reviewed. A hybrid procedure and analytical framework are introduced, using a speed-accuracy decomposition technique to analyze the intermediate products of rapid mental processes. Results invalidate many…

Three experiments involving 102 college students examined the impact of knowledge map configuration on acquisition of information. Variations in spatial configuration, map format, and link structure affected encoding and retrieval of information. These effects were mediated by the users' spatial and verbal abilities. (SLD)

Five first grade language-impaired children were trained on the phonological and perceptual components of the retrieval process, segmenting words, manipulating word segments, and forming visual and auditory images. The children improved in naming untrained pictures, but five children whose training focused on semantic associations and organization…

Investigated the picture naming skills of dyslexic children, poor comprehenders and children with normally-developing reading skills, using pictures with names that varied in word length and frequency. Relative to young children reading at the same level, dyslexic children were less accurate naming pictures that have long names, and they made a…

This study documents the sensitivity of English-French interlanguage to the process-result distinction with respect to the licensing of multiple postnominal genitives, despite a lack of direct positive or negative evidence for this distinction in the input. Documentation argues that the Universal Grammar-governed map between syntactic structures…

A "hippocampal amnesiac" (H.M.) and memory-normal controls of similar age, background, intelligence, and education read novel sentences aloud in tasks where fast and accurate reading was or was not the primary goal. H.M produced more misreadings than normal and cerebellar controls, usually without self-correction. Results support a theoretical…