We examined implicit and explicit memory in adults with Williams syndrome. An age-related dissociation was found; repetition priming (reflecting implicit memory) did not show change with age, but free recall (reflecting explicit memory) was markedly reduced. We also compared the performance of adults with Williams syndrome to adults with Down…

Purpose: The authors asked whether adolescents with Down syndrome (DS) could fast-map novel nouns and verbs when word learning depended on using the speaker's pragmatic or syntactic cues. Compared with typically developing (TD) comparison children, the authors predicted that syntactic cues would prove harder for the group with DS to use and that…

Cognition-related brain responses to meaningful and meaningless figures were registered in 5-year-old kindergarten children who either had been subtyped as being at-risk of developing an L- or P-type dyslexia (LAL versus LAP) or who were not at-risk. While identifying, naming, or categorizing pictures, event-related potentials (ERP) were…

Evolving from concern for the increasing requirements for literacy, especially visual literacy, the purpose of this study was to determine the impact of color on learning. Sixty midwestern college students were assigned to groups where they read and studied a graphic presentation, and then were tested on their recall and retention. The following…

In this study of children's memory, two types of presentation modes (pictures or words) were crossed with two levels of memory strategy ("make a picture in your mind" or "think of the word") to comprise four treatments: see picture/think picture, see picture/think word, see word/think picture, see word/think word. The study was conducted with 144…

Seven undergraduate volunteers studied a written passage on Atomic Structure and then, while answering a set of 24 multiple-choice items, talked aloud about the strategies they were using for option selection. The tape recordings of their verbal responses were analyzed for latency, memory references, and inference references. The items testing…

An assessment was made of 5- and 8-year-old children's performance on a short-term memory task under two auditory and two visual distraction conditions, as well as under a nondistraction condition. Performance under nondistraction was found to be superior to that under distraction (p<.001), indicating that the extraneous stimuli had a generally…

To determine whether different long-term memory representations are necessary for verbal and visual material, subjects studied faces composed of visual features or verbal facts composed of concepts. Findings showed interference between verbal and pictorial information, and supported the ACT theory that pictorial and verbal materials are stored…

To determine if the modality in which children represent information in memory influences the process by which problems are solved, problem-solving strategy of deaf and hearing 10-year-old children was compared on a concept-discovery task. (JMB)

Two experiments examined hyperactive children's tendency to underfocus their attention during learning. Taken together, the results of both experiments demonstrated the validity of the attentional diffusion hypothesis and indicate the need to assess the central processing demands associated with central and incidental learning in order to evaluate…

Examines whether children of different reading abilities would benefit from a mnemonic imagery strategy in a prose-learning situation. Consistent with previous findings, mnemonic imagery students remembered more name/accomplishment information than did control students. (HOD)

Results of five experiments in which adults and children were exposed to two study strategies for vocabulary learning: (1) repetition of words with meanings and (2) associative elaboration (the keyword method). Subjects were asked to choose one of the two study methods for learning a 24-item list of new vocabulary words. (SL)

Evaluated effects of perceived choice upon comprehension and memory of prose reading passages. Compared choice and no choice conditions with young and elderly adults and only elderly groups. Results indicated both age- and vocabulary-related deficits. However, perceived choice conditions did not produce any consistent improvement in performance.…

Compared the effects of memory and growth training groups on memory complaints, memory performance, and affective status in the community elderly. Results indicated that both training groups significantly reduced concerns about memory and resulted in improved memory performance. (Author)

A series of possible explanations for learning disabilities (LDS) couched in terms of information processing capabilities was tested by comparing the performance of LDS children on several types of information processing tasks with that of a control group. Subjects were 28 LDS children (10-11 years old) and 24 elementary school students of the…