Three formats of maplike displays containing historical event and location information were presented to 72 middle school students with learning disabilities (LD). Although recall of locations was significantly greater than recall of event information in all conditions, both mnemonic and elaborative encoding improved recall. (Author/DB)

Examines the role of the neighborhood in books for children and young adults. Discusses community characteristics, historical fiction, "special and scary places," neighborhoods in conflict and harmony, and the neighborhood as a memory base. Presents activities including animated maps, games, murals, small group dramas, and storytelling.…

Outdoor leaders with sound judgment can gather many specific experiences, induce them into a collection of general concepts, store these as memory maps in the mind, later recall the general concepts as needed, and deduce a specific prediction from them. Proposes that evaluative reflection after a judgment is made is the component missing from most…

Investigated the effect of using gender as a functional category in elementary school students' gender stereotyping. Results support the idea that the functional use of gender categories leads to increases in gender stereotyping, particularly among those children with less-advanced classification skills. Advanced classification skills proved to…

Norwegian 6th graders (n=107) either were taught a mnemonic imagery to apply to passages they read or were given no strategy. Mnemonic-imagery students remembered more information. Individual differences in short-term memory and verbal and visual competence did not predict performance in the imagery condition. (SLD)

Discusses the aging process related to physical changes of the human neural structure involved in learning, memory, and reasoning. Presents evidence that indicates such alterations do not necessarily signal the decline in cognitive function. Vignettes provide images of brain structures involved in learning, memory, and reasoning; hippocampal…

Four experiments with 23 second graders in Haifa (Israel) tested the hypothesis that comprehension gains in fast-paced reading are attributable primarily to changes in short-term memory (STM) functioning. Results confirm the hypothesis, providing support for a causal role of STM functioning in text processing. (SLD)

This study of the emotional status of 133 Israeli adolescents and young adults found no significant differences between subjects with dyslexia and controls. Both groups were easily differentiated from psychiatric patients. Subjects with severe deficits in ability to remember details of a text, and with concentration difficulties, exhibited high…

This paper discusses five language roots of reading: phonology, syntax, semantics, short-term and long-term memory, and auditory segmenting. Teachers are urged to focus early school experiences toward development of these five skills to reduce the incidence of reading difficulties. Specific teaching suggestions are offered. (Author/DB)

Four experiments examined the spatial orientation of children who walked while wearing a blindfold. Children and adults viewed a target, were guided blindfolded to a new point, and then aimed a pointer at the target. Route complexity, but not number of targets or time delay, affected spatial orientation. Some age differences were observed. (BC)

Follow-up interviews with 79 adults and children about 6 months after their visit to Launch Pad, the interactive center in London's Science Museum, provide evidence of long-term impact of the visit. Although most of the memories were episodic rather than semantic in nature, over one-quarter of the memories showed evidence that respondents…

Describes early research examining the validity of the original Inventory of Learning Processes. Presents a revised version of the inventory with reliability and validity data. Discusses reflective and agentic processing as the two major routes to academic achievement. Concludes that the smooth flow of cognition depends on the student's…

Examined impact of caregiving among 110 caregivers to aging family member with Alzheimer's disease. Family caregivers' appraisals along dimensions of subjective burden, negative impact, caregiving satisfaction, and caregiver mastery were correlated with extent of memory and behavior problems of patient and caregivers' coping style, locus of…

The performance of reading-disabled, math-disabled, slow-learning, under-achieving, and normal-achieving children (total n=143) was compared on verbal and visual-spatial working memory measures under initial, gain, and maintenance testing conditions. Ability group classifications changed under dynamic testing conditions. The study demonstrated the…

Reviews the literature on the relationship between schooling, IQ, and the cognitive processes presumed to underpin IQ. The data suggest the importance of quantity of schooling for IQ. Schooling fosters the development of cognitive processes that underpin performance on IQ tests. This development is unrelated to the quality of schools. (BC)