Reviews literature from neuroscience and mass communications regarding how media affects learning and memory and relates research findings to interactive multimedia. Topics discussed include knowledge and media; neurological conceptions of memory; media and memory; and interactive multimedia and memory. (Contains 24 references.) (LRW)

Learning strategies have received a lot of attention in recent years. Many books have been written for both teachers and students, outlining strategies of and for the successful language learner. The research in this area confirms that the conscious use of learning strategies enhances language achievement and proficiency. A well-developed strategy…

A learner-centered approach is a central feature of instruction based on a constructivist learning model. However, there is some confusion regarding the requirement for behavioral activity as a prerequisite for a learner-centered environment. We offer evidence in this article that some types of behavioral activity can interfere with cognitive…

We explored the circumstances in which rats engage either declarative memory (and the hippocampus) or habit memory (and the dorsal striatum). Rats with damage to the hippocampus or dorsal striatum were given three different two-choice discrimination tasks (odor, object, and pattern). These tasks differed in the number of trials required for…

Different functions have been suggested for the hippocampus and its subdivisions along both transversal and longitudinal axes. Expression of immediate-early genes (IEGs) has been used to map specific functions onto neuronal activity in different areas of the brain including the hippocampus (IEG imaging). Here we review IEG studies on hippocampal…

A minimal heuristic model of human memory storage and retrievel is outlined in which there is no self-organizing ability, and in which retrieval processes are undirected in that they do not vary with the nature of information sought. The model is applied to a variety of phenomena in human learning, forgetting and retrieval. (RC)

Two experiments were conducted which investigated the developmental patterns of children's rehearsal and organization of material to be memorized. (JMB)

Reports two experiments conducted in an attempt to extend findings by Ellis which suggest a rehearsal deficit in mentally retarded adults. (Author/SDH)

Eighteen deaf college students performed two tasks designed to investigate possible alternative codes of reading and remembering. First, Ss judged the meaningfulness of sentences with or without a concurrent task (intended to interfere with either articulatory or visual-spatial coding). Secondly, Ss remembered a list of six letters presented…

Thirty graduate students were asked to produce a type of semantic information; they named psychologists who satisfied certain restrictions. Not only was the speed in responding influenced by the speed in which restrictions were given, but the effect of order differed for advanced and beginning students. (Author/RC)

Human knowledge consists of schemata based on the specialized procedures used to interpret events in the environment. New schemata are created by modifying models of existing schemata, i.e., learning by analogy. This means that a new situation will be interpreted in accordance with the schema most similar to it in the learner's repertoire. If the…

Sixty fourth- and fifth-grade children listened to six series of six sentences each, with each sentence in a series containing the same artificial word. The task was to assign to the artificial word a meaning which would fit all sentence contexts in the series. Preliminary data provided an estimate of the probability that a particular sentence,…

A total of 441 articles related to the semantic and acoustic properties of memory are cross-referenced and listed alphabetically with the authors' original abstract or summary. (Author)

Studies of the effects of imagery instructions and other imagery induction on prose learning are included in this progress report. Five experiments were conducted to establish a developmental trend for ability to use imagery-related mediation in whole passage learning. Observations indicate that six year olds are inhibited in paraphrase recall of…

The transformation of episodic inputs to semantic representations was studied in two very similar tasks. In one, subjects were required to infer the underlying four-term linear ordering from three comparative sentences such as, "The teacher is taller than the doctor." In the second task, subjects inferred underlying 4- and 5-digit…