A battery of 28 individually administered tests, comprised of measures derived from the work of Piaget, of simple and complex learning, of language, short-term memory, long-term memory and intelligence were given to 210 children aged 5 to 6 during their first year of schooling. (Editor)

Reported two studies of the possible relation of knowledge to improvements in recall. Tested 8- to 11-year-old children and college students for knowledge recall before and after they saw videotapes about birds. Although knowledge and memory measures correlated, and most knowledge measures improved after children viewed the videotapes, recall and…

A critical evaluation of the use of stochastic independence in psychological research is provided, considering (1) confirming the null hypothesis; (2) power of the statistical test; (3) Simpson's paradox; and (4) between-subjects and within-subject correlations. The importance of formal models in studying (in)dependence is emphasized. (SLD)

Dynamic spatial ability is one's ability to estimate when a moving object will reach a destination, or one's skill in making time-to-contact (TTC) judgments. In 2 studies, we investigated the nature of dynamic spatial ability and its role in psychomotor (PM) task performance. In the first study, 405 basic military trainees were given both spatial…

Counterintuitively, Y. Kareev, I. Lieberman, and M. Lev (1997) found that a lower short-term memory capacity benefits performance on a correlation detection task. They assumed that people with low short-term memory capacity (low spans) perceived the correlations as more extreme because they relied on smaller samples, which are known to exaggerate…

Participants (6- and 7-year-olds, "N" = 130) participated in classroom activities four times. Children were interviewed about the final occurrence (target event) either 1 week or 4 weeks later, during which half of the event items were described inaccurately. Half of these suggestions were consistent with the theme of the detail across…

Testing homogeneity of correlations with Fisher's Z is inappropriate when correlations are themselves correlated. Suppose measurements of brain activation and performance are taken before and during a verbal memory task. Of interest are changes in activity gradients in specific regions, R1, R2, R3, and performance, V. The "correlated correlations"…

Given the potential importance of using modality preference with instruction, the authors tested whether learning style preference correlated with memory performance in each of 3 sensory modalities: visual, auditory, and kinesthetic. In Study 1, participants completed objective measures of pictorial, auditory, and tactile learning and learning…

A review of the history of working memory (WM) studies finds that the concept of WM evolved from short-term memory to a multi-component system. Comparison between contemporary WM models reveals: (1) consensus that the content of WM includes not only task-relevant information, but also task-irrelevant information; (2) consensus that WM consists of…

This study explores the connection between writing and working memory, specifically the role of the subvocal articulatory rehearsal process (or inner voice). The authors asked the 18 participants to type sentences describing 24 multipanel cartoons. In some conditions, the participants were required to repeat a syllable continuously while writing.…

The purpose of this investigation was to ascertain the effectiveness of Captain's Log, a computerized cognitive-training program designed to improve attention and reduce impulsivity. Participants consisted of 48 children in third through sixth grades, nominated by teachers for classroom behavior that interfered with their learning. Students were…

The longitudinal interrelations among age, visual and auditory short-term memory, and the concrete operational tasks of class inclusion and combinatorial reasoning were investigated over four testing occasions in a sample of 134 students, initially ranging from 5 to 12 years in age. The Piagetian task battery involved placement of colored…

The authors investigated factors that may determine whether perpetrators of violent crime develop intrusive memories of their offense. Of 105 young offenders who were convicted of killing or seriously harming others, 46% reported distressing intrusive memories, and 6% had posttraumatic stress disorder. Intrusions were associated with lower…

Three self-report instruments assessing learning style were administered to 106 undergraduates. Performance measures on word list and prose learning tasks were also obtained using both immediate and delayed retention tests. Canonical correlation analysis of the pairs of instruments indicated a small to moderate amount of overlapped variance.…

The purpose of the present study is twofold: the first objective is to evaluate the importance of visual experience for the ability to form a spatial representation (spatial mental model) of fairly elaborate spatial descriptions. Secondly, we examine whether blind people exhibit the same preferences (i.e. level of performance on spatial tasks) as…