Unlike other animals, humans have the unique ability to share and use verbal instructions to prepare for upcoming tasks. Recent research showed that instructions are sufficient for the automatic, reflex-like activation of responses. However, systematic studies into the limits of these automatic effects of task instructions remain relatively…

Intraindividual variability (IIV) in cognitive speed, or moment-to-moment changes in ability, is a developmental phenomenon indicative of neurological integrity that increases gradually across adulthood. Past research has shown that IIV negatively covaries with cognitive performance, in which higher IIV at one occasion is associated with poorer…

Experiments were conducted to test a modern exemplar-familiarity model on its ability to account for both short-term and long-term probe recognition within the same memory-search paradigm. Also, making connections to the literature on attention and visual search, the model was used to interpret differences in probe-recognition performance across…

Previous studies of memory in autism spectrum conditions (ASC) have consistently shown that persons with ASC have reduced memories for social information, relative to a spared memory for non-social facts. The current study aims to reproduce these findings, while examining the possible causes leading to this difference. Participants' memory…

Most theories of memory assume that representations are strengthened with repetition. We recently proposed Competitive Trace Theory, building on the hippocampus' powerful capacity to orthogonalize inputs into distinct outputs. We hypothesized that repetition elicits a similar but nonidentical memory trace, and that contextual details of…

Perhaps the most basic finding in memory research is the repetition effect--the fact that repetition enhances memory. Peterson and Mulligan (2012) recently documented a surprising "negative repetition effect," in which participants who studied a list of cue-target pairs twice recalled "fewer" targets than a group who studied…

This article views the temporal dimensions of e-learning through a psychoanalytic lens, and asks the reader to consider links between online learning and psychoanalysis. It argues that time and its associated philosophical puzzles impinge on both psychoanalytic theory and on e-learning at two specific points. The first is in the distinction…

This study investigated the effects of task relevance instructions and topic beliefs on reading processes and memory for belief-related text. Undergraduates received task instructions (focus on arguments for vs. against) before reading a dual-position text. In Experiment 1 (n = 88), a reading time methodology showed no differences in reading time…

Bayesian Knowledge Tracing (BKT) is a commonly used approach for student modeling, and Long Short Term Memory (LSTM) is a versatile model that can be applied to a wide range of tasks, such as language translation. In this work, we directly compared three models: BKT, its variant Intervention-BKT (IBKT), and LSTM, on two types of student modeling…

The ability to recognize temporal patterns and position events in time emerges during the preschool years and is refined in middle childhood. This study explored individual differences in temporal cognition in relation to verbal and nonverbal abilities. Children (30 boys, 32 girls; M[subscript age] = 8;2, age range = 6;0-10;8) completed 3…

The article investigates the mechanisms of selecting and updating representations in declarative and procedural working memory (WM). Declarative WM holds the objects of thought available, whereas procedural WM holds representations of what to do with these objects. Both systems consist of three embedded components: activated long-term memory, a…

Encoding new information in the brain requires changes in synaptic strength. Neuromodulatory transmitters can facilitate synaptic plasticity by modifying the actions and expression of specific signaling cascades, transmitter receptors and their associated signaling complexes, genes, and effector proteins. One critical neuromodulator in the…

Purpose: The goal of this study was to provide guidance to clinicians on early benchmarks of successful word learning in an interactive book reading treatment and to examine how encoding and memory evolution during treatment contribute to word learning outcomes by kindergarten children with specific language impairment (SLI). Method: Twenty-seven…

In this article, we demonstrate limitations of accessibility of information in visual working memory (VWM). Recently, cued-recall has been used to estimate the fidelity of information in VWM, where the feature of a cued object is reproduced from memory (Bays, Catalao, & Husain, 2009; Wilken & Ma, 2004; Zhang & Luck, 2008). Response…

Purpose: The aim of this study was to determine whether the word-learning challenges associated with developmental language disorder (DLD) result from encoding or retention deficits. Method In Study 1, 59 postsecondary students with DLD and 60 with normal development (ND) took the California Verbal Learning Test-Second Edition, Adult Version…