The two studies outlined in this report gauged college undergraduates' ability to learn and to recall the content of certain passages when provided with "directed perspectives" or context clues. In the first study, 63 subjects were divided into three groups, were asked to read two stories, and were assigned a perspective (home buyer,…

A verbal concept-learning task permitting the externalizing and quantifying of learning behavior and 16 ability tests were administered to female graduate students. Data were analyzed by alpha factor analysis and incomplete image analysis. Six alpha factors and 12 image factors were extracted and orthogonally rotated. Four areas of cognitive…

A free-recall procedure demonstrated state-dependent learning using alcohol. Information encoded and stored while intoxicated was more effectively retrieved when later tests of recall were performed while intoxicated, as compared to recall accomplished in the sober state. (Editor/RK)

Study habits and memorization strategies were found to differ in fourth grade good readers and poor readers. The good readers also achieved higher recall. With training in efficient mnemonic strategies, however, the poor readers performed as well as the good readers. (GDC)

Elaboration and overt rehearsal are compared as instructional paradigms for memory retention. Superior long-term retention was produced in the elaboration condition when the initial acquisition effects were statistically removed. Short-term data suggest acquisition was complexly affected by experimental condition, I.Q., and task. Elaboration…

High cognitive processing capacity (CPC) students were superior to low-CPC students in prose learning. Of the four learning modes--programmed instruction (PI), control, chunking study outline, and adjunct questions--PI was the most effective. Substantial CPC and performance correlations and poor long-term retention suggested that PI was not best…

Beginning with an identification and brief description of the four major types of memory structures--networks of propositions, intellectual skills, images, and episodes--this extensive review of previous studies identifies many examples of improved retention and transfer resulting from combinations of structures, as opposed to single structures. A…

It was hypothesized that if the episodic structure of a story determines subjects' organization of that story in memory, then variation in structure should affect the organization of information in recall. (Author/NCR)

Considers the definition of learning as usefully applied to lower animals in instances of trained food-aversion behavior as a viable instance of associative learning. (SL)

Nelson, Brooks, and Wheeler (1975) found that interference effects produced by physical similarity among word stimuli in paired associates result from the disruption of contact with the functional stimulus and that interference with associative retrieval is minimal. Data in this research challenge their conclusion on several grounds. (Author/RK)

A description of a series of six experiments dealing with human memory processes. They examined the types of codes generated in maintenance rehearsal and the effects of rehearsal time at various single levels of encoding. Data confirmed earlier findings and led to conclusions regarding repetition, encoding and levels of processing. (AMH)

Noun pairs were learned by younger and older adults. Anticipation and presentation intervals were manipulated, and there were no-imagery, experimenter-provided imagery, and self-generated imagery instructions. Older subjects generated and used imagery with the same facility as younger subjects, although retrieval time was longer. (GO)

The relation between the amount of free study time needed to prepare for a perfect serial recitation and the number of words in the list was determined for individual subjects. List organization, controlled by experimenter or by subject, failed to affect difficulty. (CHK)

Two recognition memory experiments were used to study the retention of language and modality of input. A bilingual list of American Sign Language signs and English words was presented to two deaf and two hearing groups, one instructed to remember mode of input, and one hearing group. Findings are analyzed. (CHK)

Argues that the construction of new utterances formulated by speakers of English as a foreign language is the result of the cognitive process linking up old form (memory) with new form (intent). A model sentence is learned through a process of morphological and syntactical interference and eventually becomes, due to creative re-ordering, a new…