Agents are important for structuring memory in adulthood. However, it is unclear whether this "social memory bias" stems from a reliance on agents in verbal narratives, or whether it reflects more fundamental preverbal memory processes. By testing 9-month-old infants in a non-verbal eye-tracking paradigm, we were able to effectively…

This study investigated the roles of associative learning and linguistic knowledge, in particular phonological and semantic knowledge, in word learning of Chinese readers using a cross-sectional design. Extending past research in associative learning using existing Chinese characters as word stimuli, this study resorted to pseudowords and invented…

The aim of this study was to compare visual and verbal memory in children with nonverbal learning disability (NLD) using the Children's Memory Scale and to identify the profile of strengths and weaknesses in visual memory abilities. Performance was significantly lower on measures of visual than verbal memory, indicating that children with NLD have…

This study examined the effectiveness of using "subject-performed tasks" to improve memory efficiency of eight autistic children. The procedure involved instructing children to carry out and later remember a series of actions. The procedure's effectiveness was attributed to autistic subjects' lack of verbal encoding strategies and…

Proposes a theory of social cognition to account for the comprehension and verification of social information. The theory views comprehension as a process of constructing situation models of new information on the basis of previously formed models about its referents. The comprehension of both single statements and multiple pieces of information…

This study examined conceptual relationships in semantic memory using an indirect priming technique in high-functioning autistic adolescents and controls. The autistic subjects and controls showed similar semantic priming effects. However, correlations with nonverbal cognitive measures for the autistic subjects suggests that semantic processing in…

It was predicted that two variables would influence recognition memory for complex visual stimuli: association values, and the realistic-abstract dimension, or "objectivity". The stimuli were 12 reproductions of realistic paintings (clearly representing real world objects), six of high association value and six of low; and 12 abstract pictures,…

Frequency Theory, deriving from word recognition studies, was applied to immediate recognition of nonrepresentational pictorial items by 12-year old Ss. (Author)

Psychological research shows that learning can be powerfully enhanced through testing, but this finding has so far been confined to memory tasks requiring verbal responses. We explored whether testing can enhance learning of visuospatial information in maps. Fifty subjects each studied 2 maps, one through conventional study, and the other through…

Comparison of external memory strategies in 31 children (ages 11 and 17) with mild mental retardation and 64 children without mental retardation found no differences between children with mental retardation and their age peers in frequency of use of object-oriented strategies. For all groups, external strategies were used more frequently than…

Evaluated with two age groups (mean age 8.1 years or 10.6 years) totaling 22 learning disabled children was whether there is an age related increase in recognition for visual nonverbal short term memory (STM) and the effects on STM of stimulus dimensionality, primacy, recency, and second choice responses. A serial recognition task was used to…

A total of 45 fifth grade students were the subjects of an experiment offering support for a component of learning strategy (memory imagery). Various theoretical explanations of the image-tracing phenomenon are considered, including depth of processing, dual coding and frequency. (MS)

The author presents experiemental evidence that visual coding is a significant factor in human memory, and examines evidence for the trace modality theory which states that recognition can only be mediated via the modality in which original material was encoded. (GW)

Tests the developmental memory lag hypothesis with 22 learning disabled boys on two- and three-dimensional nonverbal tasks. Finds age-equivalent recall patterns similar to those of normal children and consistent age-related differences in nonverbal recall, thereby negating the developmental lag hypothesis. (RL)