While there has been considerable success in isolating the dimensions of acoustic information that are important in perceiving and identifying speech sounds, very little is known about how the information from the various acoustic dimensions is put together in order to actually accomplish identification. Proposes and tests a model of these…

Research supported by a United States Public Health Grant to Edward E. Smith. (VM)

Early work by Bartlett in memory theory is contrasted with the more firmly entrenched empirical-associationistic notions of his time. Contemporary lines of research are then discussed within the perspective of this ongoing controversy. A more purely constructive model with active processing during retention, recall, and comprehension is presented.…

Four experiments are described that demonstrate that under certain conditions, encoding constancy results in better recall performance than encoding variability. The experiments used mnemonic devices, and various numbers of semantic contexts and orienting tasks. Encoding variability resulted in optimal recall performance when only one code for an…

Results of three experiments indicated that latency of correct recognition was sensitive to the influence of a priming treatment. The magnitude of the priming effect depended on both the taxonomic frequency of the probe items, and the length of the interval between the prime and the recognition test. (Author/RD)

Presents a literature review that covers the following topics related to Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA): (1) LSA overview; (2) applications of LSA, including information retrieval (IR), information filtering, cross-language retrieval, and other IR-related LSA applications; (3) modeling human memory, including the relationship of LSA to other…

Proposes a variant of mental model theory which suggests that the development of conditional reasoning (if--then) can be explained by such factors as the capacity of working memory, range of knowledge available to a reasoner, and his/her ability to access this knowledge "on-line." Finds much empirical data explained by this model.…

Tested predictions of dynamic field theory in study of 3-year-olds' location memory errors in task with homogeneous task space. Found that young children's spatial memory responses are affected by delay- and experience-dependent processes as well as the geometric structure of the task space. Both dynamic field theory and category adjustment models…

Attempts to unify two major approaches to the study of text comprehension into a process model of causal reasoning which explains how readers discover the causal structure of a complicated text. Presents empirical evidence to support the model. (RS)

Works on constructing a computational model of phonological short-term memory. Initial goals include performing large-scale research for data on the characteristics of phonological retention and retrieval, learning existing theoretical constructs, exploring alternative computational methods, and gathering experimental evidence to constrain the…

Discusses large-scale software development and describes the development of the Designer Assistant to improve software development effectiveness. Highlights include the knowledge management problem; related work, including artificial intelligence and expert systems, software process modeling research, and other approaches to organizational memory;…

Proposes a cognitive-based model for instructional design that addresses the acquisition and employment of knowledge, the interaction of content knowledge and cognitive strategies for higher order thinking skills, and the affective domain. Educational learning theory is discussed, including working memory, long-term memory, and cognitive skills.…

A theoretical integration of the storage and processing functions of working memory in language comprehension is presented. A computational theory is described in which storage and processing are fueled by activation. Capacity is expressed as the maximum amount of activation available in working memory for either storage or processing. (SLD)

The claim that knowledge alone accounts for variance of memory and development (MAD) is critiqued. Topics include the movement toward a knowledge-based view of MAD and problems with this approach; data suggesting that domain-independent strategies influence MAD; and evidence for a domain-independent tool of developmental import. (SLD)

The delay retention effect was examined using a recent model of feedback for 154 undergraduates, testing the assumptions of the model and investigating the effects of different types of feedback on posttest performance. Implications of better performance after delayed feedback and the assumptions of the model are explored. (SLD)