A listener's inferences about why speakers say what they do can influence what the listener remembers. Psychologists studying memory for discourse have neglected to give attention to the source of the information to be remembered. In a study to determine what effects adding information has on remembering initial discourse, subjects listening to…

It was reasoned that if the right ear/left brain hemisphere is more efficient than the left ear/right hemisphere at extracting the meaning of a sentence, then verbatim information presented to the right ear may be more difficult to retrieve than verbatim information presented to the left ear immediately after the sentence is heard. This idea was…

This document includes 10 articles dealing with five specific areas of language development. Two articles and a commentary cover each area. Resumes of the articles have been assigned the following numbers: memory functions (PS 001 487 and PS 001 488), associations and verbal habits (PS 001 489 and PS 001 490), language perception and…

Focus is on the duties of an administrator in establishing a reading clinic. Learning difficulties and characteristics of severly disabled readers are listed. Current approaches such as the university clinic, public school clinics, and mobile clinics are shown, and working examples of each are cited. Considerations of use, financing, and…

A comprehension model of simultaneous interpretation activity raises three types of problems: structure of semantic information stored in long-term memory, modalities of input processing and specific restrictions due to situation. A useful concept of semantic mnesic structures includes: (1) a componential-predicative lexicon; (2) a propositional…

Four experiments examined the effect of input sequence on memory for simple stories. After reading stories written in either chronological or flashback sequence, subjects made a decision about the underlying order of occurrence of two events. Responses were consistently faster and more accurate on chronological sequences under three conditions of…

People sometimes forget a name or a word, and are plagued by the feeling that the sought-for word is somewhere in memory but not immediately available. The frequent description of this tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) phenomenon as subthreshold memory traces is challenged by data showing that TOT genesis and TOT recovery are distinct processes. In a verbal…

The literature on performance differences in various tasks as a function of reflection-impulsivity (R-I) is reviewed in this publication. A series of four experiments is then described which involve the cognitive-perceptual basis of R-I of children on a picture recognition memory task. Results from these studies indicated the following important,…

This study examines recall of narrative prose for evidence of underlying structures such as the grammar used in the story's sentence structure. Subjects listened to repeated presentations of a tape recording of two pages from a history book, with verbals collected after each presentation. The subjects used in this experiment were 13 undergraduate…

Research is reviewed in support of the author's hypothesis that the majority (60 to 80 percent) of learning disabled children are not brain damaged but have above average spatial ability and major deficits in auditory-vocal memory processing which are genetic in nature. Research is reported to support other aspects of his hypothesis such as the…

Various methods of learning employed to solve problems in mechanical engineering are presented. Results indicate that video recording and playback to students is the most effective instruction process. A comparison of analytical thinking to rote memory was made, and variables which affect learning, such as personality, are discussed. (NTIS)

Thematization, the relative frequency of a discourse referent, and topicalization are conceptualized as related discourse functions. In a probe recall experiment, a word with a thematized referent was a better recall probe than a word with a nonthematized referent. Also, an agent noun was a better prompt than a recipient, and this semantic…

A proposal to formulate nomothetic theories -- general statements or scientific laws -- in a way to allow for an immediate test of individual differences is presented. The need for such a proposal is cited in recent developments in structural model building in the area of memory called information processing and in the concern to bring individual…

In a replication of a similar study with American children, 56 normal native Israeli children (5-years-old) were studied to determine the universality of self-generated verbal mediators as a means of enhancing memory processes. Eight Ss, randomly selected, were assigned in each of the following conditions: labeling, sentence generation, listening…

The validity of certain standardized tests may be affected by the short-term memory load therein and its relation to a child's short-term memory capacity. Factors of testing which increase a test's memory load and consequently interfere with comprehension are discussed. It is hypothesized that a test which strains the short-term memory capacity of…