Two individual differences studies tested relationships between listening comprehension and two conceptualizations of working memory (WM) capacity. Recently, some theorists have stressed that the empirically indicated limits of rehearsal-based WM storage components are inconsistent with the amounts of information needed to accomplish complex…

Based on the assumption that the more teachers know about brain science, the better prepared they will be to make instructional decisions, this book presents information on current research regarding learning and memory, and applies the research to situations that educators face daily. Chapter 1 examines the structure of the brain and its…

Damage to the medial region of the thalamus, both in clinical cases (e.g., patients with infarcts or the Korsakoff's syndrome) and animal lesion models, is associated with variable amnesic deficits. Some studies suggest that many of these memory deficits rely on the presence of lateral thalamic lesions (LT) that include the intralaminar nuclei,…

The growing literature on semantic memory suggests that many concepts normally believed to belong to certain semantic categories functionally belong to other categories. This determination can be explored by a variety of priming methodologies in which a subject's reaction time is analyzed while making certain judgements about a visually presented…

The structure-of-intellect model is updated to contain five content properties: (1) visual; (2) auditory; (3) symbolic; (4) semantic; and (5) behavioral. The memory element within the operations facet is differentiated into memory recording and memory retention. Research is cited to support these changes, the operations, and the products of the…

Infants exposed to a set of artificially-created face stimuli having distinct mean and modal prototypes showed a pattern of behavior predicted by category abstraction models. Infants appeared to abstract, at the time of learning, a feature-count summary of the category displayed. (Author/RH)

Argues that the resources and response competition models discussed by Brainerd and Reyna (in this issue) may not be mutually exclusive, but instead may model different aspects of performance. The problem is not to decide between the two models in general, but rather to determine which aspects of performance are best explained by each. (RH)

Reviews three theories of how we retain order in memory and their predictions for errors people make when they recall a sequence incorrectly. A new model of short-term memory is presented, the Start-End Model (SEM), in which the positions of items in a sequence are coded relative to the sequence start and end. (SLD)

When items on one list receive more encoding than items on another list, the improvement in performance usually manifests as an increase in the hit rate and a decrease in the false alarm rate (FAR). A common account of this strength based mirror effect is that participants adopt a more strict criterion following a strongly than weakly encoded list…

Recent evidence indicates that task and subject variables that are associated with increased interaction between the left and right cerebral hemispheres result in enhanced performance on tests of episodic memory. The current study looked at the effects of increased interhemispheric interaction on false memories using a verbal converging semantic…

The present experiments represent a phenomenon in which people experienced an illusion of knowing such that they were overconfident in their ability to remember information they subsequently were unable to recall. Semantic associates of cues served as targets and were studied during the original and interpolated study phases of a retroactive…

The authors examined how situation models are updated during text comprehension. If comprehenders keep track of the evolving situation, they should update their models such that the most current information, the here and now, is more available than outdated information. Contrary to this updating hypothesis, E. J. O'Brien, M. L. Rizzella, J. E.…

In a series of experiments, participants were required to keep track of 1 or 2 working memory (WM) objects, having to update their values in 80% of the trials. Updating cost, defined as the difference between update and non-update trials, was larger when 2 objects were involved compared with when there was only 1 object was involved. This finding…

Recent psychological and neuropsychological research suggests that executive functions--the cognitive control processes that regulate thought and action--are multifaceted and that different types of executive functions are correlated but separable. The present multivariate twin study of 3 executive functions (inhibiting dominant responses,…

The current study provides evidence for the existence of an other-age effect (OAE), analogous to the well-documented other-race effect. Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrate that adults are better at recognizing adult faces compared with faces of newborns and children. Results from Experiment 3 indicate that the OAE obtained with child faces can be…