Although age-related memory differences in adulthood occur in a variety of memory tasks, most of these tasks represent uncommon memory demands. An investigation of everyday memory demands explored the effect of contextual organization on memory performance of middle aged (N=20) and older (N=20) women. Tasks involved reconstruction of spatial…

Two passages were written, one on the topic of graphs and one on the topic of sonnets. Sixteen versions of each passage were constructed. Each version contained identical content but different textual manipulations. One hundred twelve community college students and 48 Cornell students participated in the experiment. Each read a single version of…

This paper reports an attempt to replicate previously published findings on the interrelationship between free-recall performance and selected cognitive abilities. In Experiment I, 300 7th and 12th graders responded to a battery of eight intelligence and memory tests and were then randomly assigned to one of three pre-learning instructional…

The learning of a list of 20 Blissymbols and comparable American Sign Language signs by 121 nonhandicapped undergraduate psychology students was compared. Blissymbols were learned significantly faster than manual signs, particularly in early learning trials. Results are discussed in terms of the memory requirements of the two systems. (Author/JDD)

First and fifth graders participated in this assessment of ways in which differential experience with objects in a spatial array might establish relative landmarks within the array. Results suggest that different levels of experience can establish elements as relative landmarks in spatial memory. (Author/RWB)

Two experiments look at factors influencing the ways children construct an abstract representation of story structure that contains the characteristics described by story grammars. (RWB)

This study was designed to explore relations among reading skills, metareading, memory, and metamemory. Interactions among these skills were investigated as related to reading ability, operativity, and grade level. The effects of experience, operativity, and metacognition on reading and memory skills were discussed. (Author/DWH)

This study examined the effects of undergraduate students' cognitive style on short term recall of content information from still projected visuals of different sizes (full, one half, one quarter frame) and types (paintings, photographs, line drawings). No significant differences in the mean scores of field dependent and independent subjects was…

Describes a cross-cultural comparative study of recall memory among children from two Guatemalan towns and one American city. (CM)

Investigated verbal and nonverbal paired associate learning among 8- to 11-year-old Dutch dyslexic children and chronological-age and reading-age controls. Found that dyslexic children had difficulty with verbal learning of words and nonwords. Phonological and general learning errors were distributed similarly for the reading groups. Found no…

Three studies of language comprehension skills compared 9- and 10-year-old learning-disabled children (LDC) with difficulty retaining verbal information (n=8) with LDC with normal memory spans (n=8) and normally achieving children (n=16). LDC did not have significant impairments in listening comprehension. However, LDC may experience difficulties…

Examined the phonological memory capacity, rate of articulation, phonological encoding, and perceptual-processing abilities of 13 specifically language-impaired (SLI) children and 13 language-matched normal (NL) children. The results of a nonsense word repetition task showed that SLI children repeated significantly fewer multisyllabic nonsense…

Decoding, working memory, and domain-specific prior knowledge were studied as predictors of comprehension for 48 university undergraduate students after rewriting notes, rereading notes, or rereading a text. Working memory was most important for comprehension of text-implicit information, whereas knowledge was relatively more important for…

Problem-solving models in memories of 11 good and 12 poor novice first-year university students were studied. The students reconstructed physics problems seen briefly, relying on models in memory. Both good and poor students had models of problem situations at their disposal, but good students performed better than poor students. (SLD)

Describes Finnish children's views about their early childhood education experiences, comparing children attending preschools, day-care centers, and family day care. In written essays, 704 urban and rural children in third, fourth, and fifth grades reported their experiences regarding basic care, education, caregivers, peer relationships, physical…