Reports on three experiments that: (1) extend the findings of Scarborough et al. (1977) that exposure to single words facilitates lexical judgments of single words, and (2) suggest that recency of exposure may contribute to word "frequency" effects in reading and in learning from written material. (Author/AM)

Children's ability to produce and use natural language mediators on a paired-associate recall task requiring self-generated elaboration was analyzed. Elaborations were recorded and classified according to a semantic-syntactic scheme. Comparisons between grades were made to determine the effectiveness of elaboration categories in facilitating…

Five experiments were conducted that illustrate microprocesses of discourse comprehension related to foregrounding. An intermediate case in which prior memories exist but must be reinstated to active memory was studied in detail. (SW)

Sixty kindergarten, sixty second grade, and sixty fourth grade students performed several memory tasks under one of six conditions. The conditions differed as to the method of presentation of information. The study focused on developmental changes in children's use of verbal, nonverbal, and spatial-positional cues for memory. (Editor)

Examined memory functions in individuals with and without autism. Found that the group with autism performed significantly worse than the nonautistic group on temporal order memory, source memory, supraspan free recall, working memory and executive function but not on short- and long-term recognition, cued recall, or new learning ability. (MOK)

Discussion of behavioral interventions in Alzheimer's disease (AD) notes new understanding, including that memory is not a unitary phenomenon, that certain types of memory are relatively spared in AD, and that conceptual knowledge is largely intact. Intervention techniques that capitalize on spared memory systems and take advantage of principles…

Contrasts the hypothesis that phonological memory, but not phonological sensitivity, accounts for significant variation in young children's receptive vocabulary. Presents the view that both phonological memory and sensitivity are manifestations of a latent phonological processing ability. Suggests that with age and performance IQ effects…

Preschool children were given a memory task that required repeating a list of animal names and a sentence imitation task. Results confirmed a relationship between word span and language imitation in younger preschool children and the notion of a memory constraint on early spontaneous language. Increasing mastery of linguistic rules appeared to…

Examined relationships among working memory, memory span, and reading skills in children and adults. Found that working memory and short-term memory skills develop through adolescence, but working memory skills show declines in adulthood. Age-related declines in memory appear to be related to the task's processing demands, which may affect the…

Discusses the question of aptitude from within an information-processing perspective, examines how aptitude is conceptualized in this framework, and discusses one possible component of L2 aptitude: working memory. (56 references) (Author/CK)

Illustrates some of the analytic tools and conventions associated with the construction and evaluation of dynamic models of the processes underlying learning, memory, and development. Describes a study finding that children may exhibit slower disintegration of verbatim memory traces than adults due to interference; however, adults may be more…

Examines the psychological basis of hypermedia as a medium for learning, surveys the characteristics of current hypermedia systems, and suggests ways to make hypermedia systems more valuable as instructional environments. Highlights include parallels between human memory and hypermedia architectures; and hypermedia as knowledge presentation,…

Fifty two- to three-year olds performed paired-associate or control tasks with response items that were related or unrelated. Children in the related task performed more slowly than children in the unrelated task. Findings suggest that children in the related task experienced interference in the acquisition or retrieval of paired-associate items.…

Aversive conditioning is an ideal model for studying cholinergic effects on the processes of learning and memory for several reasons. First, deficits produced by selective lesions of the anatomical structures shown to be critical for Pavlovian fear conditioning and inhibitory avoidance (such as the amygdala and hippocampus) resemble those deficits…

Extinction of classically conditioned fear, like its acquisition, is active learning, but little is known about its molecular mechanisms. We recently reported that temporal massing of conditional stimulus (CS) presentations improves extinction memory acquisition, and suggested that temporal spacing was less effective because individual CS…