Investigated development of working memory in the transitional period from infancy to preschool years. The age-related increase in scores on the Imitation Sorting Task (IST) appeared to be about one unit every six months. Results suggest that the IST has a good construct validity. (AA)

This article takes a critical look at methods used to identify learning disability (such as use of ability/achievement discrepancy formulas and medical/neurobiological diagnosis) and presents an alternative method that adds assessment of the psychological processes of memory and learning to current practices of assessing intelligence and…

Method is presented for displaying the sequential and multirelational ideation of scientific narrative elicited from respondents. The flow map provides a figural representation of the flow of information, the points in the flow where multirelational and recurrent linkages are made, and the time required to retrieve and express the information at…

Describes a demonstration to illustrate the importance of knowing what is supposed to be learned before studying begins. Suggests that the exercise may be used to show the basic elements of a scientific experiment. Explains that attention's effect upon memory is shown by students' tendency to remember best what they are told to remember. (DK)

Describes the process of active learning--consolidation and internalization of information that is personally meaningful and conceptually coherent. Discusses downshifting (a self-protective response that includes reversion to routine behaviors) and the educational practices and conditions that lead to it or reduce it. Describes 12 principles of…

Examines the relative contribution of phonological short term memory (STM) to vocabulary acquisition in 5-year-old children. The results show that work span, rhyme detection and nonword repetition predict concurrent vocabulary level at age 5. When the study was repeated with same subjects one year later, span and rhyme detection again predicted…

Stress facilitates memory formation, but only when the stressor is closely linked to the learning context. These effects are, at least in part, mediated by corticosteroid hormones. Here we demonstrate that corticosterone rapidly facilitates synaptic potentiation in the mouse hippocampal CA1 area when high levels of the hormone and high-frequency…

Understanding the function of the distinct amygdaloid nuclei in learning comprises a major challenge. In the two studies described herein, we used c-Fos immunolabeling to compare the engagement of various nuclei of the amygdala in appetitive and aversive instrumental training procedures. In the first experiment, rats that had already acquired a…

In 5 experiments, a Hebb repetition effect, that is, improved immediate serial recall of an (unannounced) repeating list, was demonstrated in the immediate serial recall of visual materials, even when use of phonological short-term memory was blocked by concurrent articulation. The learning of a repeatedly presented letter list in one modality…

The authors explore the division of labor between the basal ganglia-dopamine (BG-DA) system and the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) in decision making. They show that a primitive neural network model of the BG-DA system slowly learns to make decisions on the basis of the relative probability of rewards but is not as sensitive to (a) recency or (b) the…

This study examined the effects of episodic-mapping, traditional notetaking, and rereading on eighth-grade students' recall of historical text. Episodic-maps are a kind of notetaking procedure that requires students to represent ideas from a text in the form of a graphic diagram. As predicted, both episodic-mapping and traditional notetaking…

Aimed at classroom teachers interested in teaching learning skills to their elementary and secondary students, this guide offers an alternative to teaching "facts" that may rapidly become outdated. The guide is based on Dr. Leslie Hart's Proster Theory, which proposes that the brain requires large amounts of input to function; that after…

A discussion of the ease or difficulty of learning vocabulary words in a second language looks at a variety of issues in second language instruction. Research on factors in vocabulary learning is discussed, focusing on such factors as similarity in form and morphology, deceptive morphological structure, different syntactic patterning in the native…

Individual differences in fourth grade students' abilities to profit from experimenter-provided picture adjunct aids on prose recall tasks were examined. It was hypothesized that poor paired associate learners would benefit from picture adjunct aids to a greater extent than good paired associate learners. A secondary aim was to assess the effects…

This review of literature on the topic of learning style opens with a history of the development of theories on information processing habits which represent the learner's typical modes of perceiving, thinking, remembering, and problem solving. A discussion is included on writings about the sense modalities used in learning--visual, aural,…