Recent evidence suggests a close functional relationship between memory formation in the hippocampus and dopaminergic neuromodulation originating in the ventral tegmental area and medial substantia nigra of the midbrain. Here we report midbrain activation in two functional MRI studies of visual memory in healthy young adults. In the first study,…

The sum-difference theory of remembering and knowing (STREAK) provides a sophisticated account of many interactions in the remember-know (R-K) area (C. M. Rotello, N. A. Macmillan, & J. A. Reeder, 2004; see record 2004-15929-002). It assumes 2 orthogonal strength dimensions and oblique criterion planes. Another dual-process model (J. T. Wixted…

In this study, cognitive processes hypothesized to be relevant to the digit symbol task of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) were examined. Fifty-two undergraduate education students were divided into four groups to receive four different treatments. All the students took the digit symbol test, followed immediately by a test of their…

The present experiment investigated memory attribute dominance in young children by measuring false recognition responses to associatively and acoustically related words. Second- and sixth-grade children, half of whom were high SES and half low SES, served as subjects. Following Underwood (1969), a shift from acoustic to associative memory…

Endel Tulving's distinction between "episodic" and "semantic" memory defines age differences in word association norms more comprehensively than the usual syntactic classifications. As subjects mature the principal development is an episodic-semantic shift. Young children associate primarily with the stimulus' perceived…

Research supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, University of Minnesota, and National Research Council of Canada. (DS)

Effect of instructional conditions on the nature of memory errors was studied using a false recognition procedure. (Authors)

Humans conduct visual search faster when the same display is presented for a 2nd time, showing implicit learning of repeated displays. This study examines whether learning of a spatial layout transfers to other layouts that are occupied by items of new shapes or colors. The authors show that spatial context learning is sometimes contingent on item…

Mentally retarded subjects who could read were tested on their ability to pronounce words and to produce meaningful associates. Analyses of their responses indicated an overuse of a strategy of memorizing words as a way to recognize words in print and an inability to consider word meanings in terms of abstract referents. A comparison of these…

To develop a coherent description of the knowledge and processes involved in skillful word recognition, a study was devised in which 16 adults participated in four related experiments. The purpose of the first experiment was to examine some basic aspects of the processing of words, pseudowords, and nonwords and to discover basic differences in…

The present study was conducted to demonstrate the power of imagery instructional sets to improve the recall of units more complex than in the traditional paired associate (P-A) paradigm and to evaluate imagery as a memory organizer. Forty-eight sixth grade children were randomly assigned to one of four experimental conditions, defined by the…

Four experiments are reported evaluating the effectiveness of a mnemonic procedure, called the keyword method, for learning a foreign language vocabulary. The method divides the study of a vocabulary item into two stages. The first stage involves associating the spoken foreign word to an English word that sounds like some part of the foreign word;…