Two experiments were conducted to investigate the development of evaluative and taxonomic encoding in children's memory. The task used was a modification of the Wickens short-term memory task in which subjects' recall of words is tested following a distraction task. The first experiment found that 11-year-old children, but not 8-year-old children,…

This study tests the hypothesis that labeling facilitates recall in nursery school children if and only if it leads to rehearsal. Subjects were 34 children ranging in age from 47 to 53 months. During pretraining, those children in the Label group named pictures of animals and fruits as they were presented, while those in the No Label group matched…

In the serial position memory task, a series of stimulus cards are placed face down in a row in front of the subject. A card identical to the stimulus card is then shown to the subject, who is required to indicate the position of this card in the stimulus array. The present three studies investigated the possibility that the labeling effect found…

The Sampling Organization and Recall Through Strategies (SORTS) test was administered to 87 educable mentally retarded (EMR) children (mean chronological age, 97 months; mean IQ, 70) and 31 nonretarded (NR) second grade children to determine Ss' characteristic grouping responses, the effects of various organizational strategies on recall and…

Two experiments were conducted to examine the possibility that numbering might have an effect on learning of lists composed of more meaningful and highly available materials, words, and to further explore the possibility that different strategies may be employed in learning the two types of lists. In Experiment 1, 40 female students from…

Although taking notes during a lecture can interfere with absorption of information, review of notes before a test neutralized the interfering effect. (Editor)

Voluntary forgetting of a list of verbal items was tested under two conditions. Results show that both recall and recognition increase as a function of the spacing between the two occurrences under the Remember-Forget condition, but not under the Forget Forget-Remember condition. (Editor/RK)

Interresponse time (IRT) data were used to investigate the hypothesis that the learning to cluster (effectively organizing presented material) phenomenon should be interpreted as the result of a retrieval strategy. A systematic increase of category exit criterion should produce an increase in clustering because more category words should be…

One hundred and eight 12-year-old children recalled words from sentences they had rated as producing bizarre images significantly better than they recalled the same words from sentences rated as producing ordinary images. A tentative explanation is offered in terms of a cognitive approach to perception itself. (Editor/RK)

Using a network of comparisons, B. Hayes-Roth and F. Hayes-Roth found that subjects performed better on adjacent than on nonadjacent comparisons. Results suggested that such networks are processed in a manner fundamentally different from simple linear arrays. Here subjects were required to learn a similar knowledge structure. These results…

A review of some recent experiments suggested that general similarity between words might successfully function as a structural principle for semantic memory. A spatial model based on that assumption is proposed. The relation of this model to network and set-theoretic models of semantic memory is discussed, as is the relation of this model for…

Three new experiments concerning the depth-of-processing view demonstrate that repetition at the phonemic depth of processing does facilitate memory, regardless of whether the repetitions are massed or distributed and regardless of whether the dependent variable is uncued recall, cued recall or recognition. (Author/RM)

Together, these studies replicate and extend Gordon and Spear's (1973a) findings that proactive interference decreases as the interval between prior and subsequent learning increases and that reactivation of a prior memory just before subsequent learning significantly increases the proactive interference due to the prior learning. (Author/RK)

A simulation model of episodic memory, MINERVA Z, is applied to the learning of concepts, as represented by the schema-abstraction task. The model successfully predicts basic findings from the scheme-abstraction literature, including some that have been cited as evidence against exemplary theories of concepts. (Author/LMO)

Studies with Nootropic psychoactive drugs (such as Piracetam) suggest that Piracetam lacks significant side effects; promotes memory and learning; and improves the reading ability of dyslexics, possibly by directly affecting the left-brain hemisphere. Results are contrasted with studies showing the lack of effectiveness of intensive teaching.…