Young infants spend most of their waking time looking around, but whether they learn anything about what they see is unknown. We used a sensory preconditioning paradigm and a deferred imitation task to assess if 3-month-olds formed a latent association between 2 objects (S[subscript 1], S[subscript 2]) that they merely saw together. Because…

Memory for scene changes that were identified immediately (passive encoding) or following systematic and effortful search (generative encoding) was compared across groups differing in age and intelligence. In the context of flicker methodology, generative search for the changing object involved selection and rejection of multiple potential…

Autonomously developing organisms face several challenges when learning reaching movements. First, motor control is learned unsupervised or self-supervised. Second, knowledge of sensorimotor contingencies is acquired in contexts in which action consequences unfold in time. Third, motor redundancies must be resolved. To solve all 3 of these…

Troubleshooting in a practice situation requires two types of information, namely for reasoning about the problem-cause and for finding an adequate solution ("declarative information") and for manipulating the environment ("procedural information"). It is hypothesized that presenting this information piece-by-piece during practice (i.e.,…

Previous studies have suggested better learning when people actively intervene rather than when they passively observe the stimuli in a judgment task. In 4 experiments, the authors investigated the hypothesis that this improvement is associated with a shift from exemplar memory to cue abstraction. In a multiple-cue judgment task with continuous…

Reading is fundamental to learning. Vital to learning is memory, which is the mental faculty used to retrieve what was read and understood. The human brain is about the size of a grapefruit and weighs about as much as a head of cabbage. The cerebral cortex is a kind of problem-solving and memorizing device. The hippocampus plays a critically…

This study examines whether or not abstract or concrete prose material is easier to learn and remember. The results indicate that concrete paragraphs were consistently faster to learn and easier to remember. (DE)

To aid instructors in teaching their students to use effective methods of memorization, this article outlines major memory methods, provides examples of their use, evaluates the methods, and discusses ways students can be taught to apply them. First, common, but less effective, memory methods are presented, including reading and re-reading…

This report is based on interviews with a group of elementary school children about how they answered the items in an achievement test administered 12 months after a 7-week instructional unit. Data from the interviews are related to data from further pretests and posttests and from detailed observations and recordings of the original instructional…

Goodenough's (1976) findings on field dependence/independence are extended here by focusing on the information processing stages of attention, encoding in short term and working memories, and storage and retrieval processes of long term memory. The reviewed research indicates that field independent and dependent individuals differ in the ability…

An overview of theory and research in memory as it relates to developmental differences is offered in this paper, which is intended to provide background information for the staff of the Skills Essential to Learning Television Project (a multi-level series of video and print resources for classroom use). A model for viewing information processing…

Popular and applied business literature related to self-improvement is reviewed in this working paper, one of eight which provide background information for the staff of the Skills Essential to Learning Television Project (a multi-level series of video and print resources for classroom use). A review of theories of time management in section I…

Reasoning and logical thinking can be defined and explained from different perspectives. Three approaches are reviewed in this report; they are: (1) the logical structure approach; (2) the Piagetian approach of developmental stages; and (3) the information processing or memory approach. Four hypotheses related to these approaches were investigated…

Subjects (n=24), 12 of whom were in the age range of 18-30 years and 12 of whom were between 55-65 years, performed two semantic memory tasks. Results suggested that subjects in the older group may have retrieved information faster than the young subjects, but that they required longer to decide upon a response. (Author)

Examines the inhibition of recall of list items when extralist items are introduced, and describes experiments which suggest that this is an expression of a more general inhibition phenomenon. (Author/AM)