In this article, we discuss the role of rostral prefrontal cortex (approximating Brodmann Area 10) in two domains relevant to education: executive function (particularly prospective memory, our ability to realize delayed intentions) and social cognition (particularly our ability to reflect on our own mental states and the mental states of others).…

Three experiments used the "list-before-the-last" free recall paradigm (Shiffrin, 1970) to investigate retrieval for context and the manner in which context changes. This paradigm manipulates target and intervening list lengths to measure the interference from each list, providing a measure of list isolation. Correct target list recall was only…

Three experiments investigated the roles of intrinsic directions of a scene and observer's viewing direction in recognizing the scene. Participants learned the locations of seven objects along an intrinsic direction that was different from their viewing direction and then recognized spatial arrangements of three or six of these objects from…

Despite that fact that landmarks play a prominent role in human navigation, experimental evidence on how landmarks are selected and defined by human navigators remains elusive. Indeed, the concept of a "landmark" is itself not entirely clear. In everyday language, the term landmark refers to salient, distinguishable, and usually nameable objects,…

Four dual-task experiments examined visuospatial, articulatory, and central executive working memory involvement during the development and application of spatial mental models. In Experiments 1 and 2 participants read route and survey spatial descriptions while undertaking one of four secondary tasks targeting working memory components.…

This article addresses the issue of whether the remember-know (RK) task is best explained by a single-process or a dual-process model. All single-process models propose that remember and know responses reflect different levels of a single strength-of-evidence dimension. Thus, across conditions in which response criteria are held constant, these…

Two experiments investigated criterion setting and metacognitive processes underlying the strategic regulation of accuracy on the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) using Type-2 signal detection theory (SDT). In Experiment 1, report bias was manipulated by penalizing participants either 0.25 (low incentive) or 4 (high incentive) points for each error.…

The purpose of this article is to clarify conceptions, definitions, and applications of learning and problem-solving efficiency. Conceptions of efficiency vary within the field of educational psychology, and there is little consensus as to how to define, measure, and interpret the efficiency construct. We compare three diverse models that differ…

The attentional blink (J. E. Raymond, K. L. Shapiro, & K. M. Arnell, 1992) refers to an apparent gap in perception observed when a second target follows a first within several hundred milliseconds. Theoretical and computational work have provided explanations for early sets of blink data, but more recent data have challenged these accounts by…

An enduring enterprise of experimental psychology has been to account for individual differences in human performance. Recent advances in neuroimaging have permitted testing of hypotheses regarding the neural bases of individual differences but this burgeoning literature has been characterized by inconsistent results. We argue that careful design…

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between two contrasting research paradigms, namely, cognitive and experiential research, a significant literature review previously unaddressed. To achieve this objective, a conceptual description of three theoretical frameworks, Dual-Store model, Levels of Processing (LOP; drawn from…

Four experiments examined subjective experience during retrieval in the DRM false memory paradigm [Deese, J. (1959). "On the prediction of occurrence of particular verbal intrusions in immediate recall." "Journal of Experimental Psychology," 58, 17-22; Roediger, H. L., & McDermott, K. B. (1995). "Creating false memories: Remembering words not…

Many studies into learners' ideas in science have reported that aspects of learners' thinking can be represented in terms of entities described in such terms as alternative conceptions or conceptual frameworks, which are considered to describe relatively stable aspects of conceptual knowledge that are represented in the learner's memory and…

The mnemonic model of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) proposed by D. C. Rubin, D. Berntsen, and M. K. Bohni presents some provocative and potentially insightful ideas about this mental disorder. D. C. Rubin et al. suggested that PTSD is caused and maintained through a "pathogenic memory" (D. C. Rubin et al., 2008, p. 985) of a negative event…

Whereas traditional theories of gender development have focused on individualistic paths, recent analyses have argued for a more social categorical approach to children's understanding of gender. Using a modeling paradigm based on K. Bussey and A. Bandura (1984), 3 experiments (N = 62, N = 32, and N = 64) examined preschoolers' (M age = 52.9…