Working memory span tasks require participants to maintain items in short-term memory while performing some concurrent processing (e.g., reading, counting, or problem solving). The present series of experiments contrasted two models of the development of working memory spans in children. Is this development mainly due to faster completion of the…

Readers comprehend narrative texts by constructing a series of mental models of the situations described in the text. These models are updated when readers encounter information indicating that the current model is no longer relevant, such as a change in narrative time. The results of four experiments suggest that readers perceive temporal changes…

As time passes, people often remember the gist of an event though they cannot remember its details. Can rememberers exploit this difference by strategically regulating the ''grain size'' of their answers over time, to avoid reporting wrong information? A metacognitive model of the control of grain size in memory reporting was examined in two…

The current study examined the neuropsychological correlates of memory accuracy in older and younger adults. Participants were tested in a memory monitoring paradigm developed by Koriat and Goldsmith (1996), which permits separate assessments of the accuracy of responses generated during retrieval and the accuracy of monitoring those responses.…

Two experiments were carried out to study the metamemory theory of confidence for the domain of sentence recall. Experiment 1 used nondeceptive sentences and deceptive synonym substitution sentences. Experiment 2 used nondeceptive sentences and deceptive schema inference sentences. In both experiments there was a strong positive relationship…

We used implicit measures of memory to ascertain whether false memories for critical nonpresented items in the DRM paradigm (Deese, 1959; Roediger & McDermott, 1995) contain structural and perceptual detail. In Experiment 1, we manipulated presentation modality in a visual word-stem-completion task. Critical item priming was significant and…

Research suggests that both working memory capacity and domain knowledge contribute to individual differences in higher-level cognition. This study evaluated three hypotheses concerning the interplay between these factors. The compensation hypothesis predicts that domain knowledge attenuates the influence of working memory capacity on higher-level…

The correlation between a measure of working memory capacity (WMC) (Operation Span) and a measure of fluid abilities (Raven Advanced Progressive Matrices) was examined. Specifically, performance on Raven problems was decomposed by difficulty, memory load, and rule type. The results suggest that the relation between Operation Span and Raven is…

In acquiring mnemonic strategies, children may demonstrate a utilization deficiency phase in which they successfully execute a strategy but it does not facilitate memory performance. The present experiment suggests that utilization deficiencies are not a developmental phenomenon per se, but rather a byproduct of diminished working memory capacity…

O'Brien, Rizzella, Albrecht, and Halleran (1998) demonstrated that when a protagonist is introduced with information that is inconsistent with an action described in a subsequent target sentence, reading times on that sentence were disrupted. This occurred even when the inconsistent information was followed by consistent information that outdated…

Conventional memory assessment may fail to identify memory dysfunction characterized by intact recall for a relatively brief period but rapid forgetting thereafter. This study assessed learning and retention after 30-min and 24-hr delays on auditory and visual selective reminding tests (SRTs) in right (n=20) and left (n=22) temporal lobe epilepsy…

Memory loss in retrograde amnesia has long been held to be larger for recent periods than for remote periods, a pattern usually referred to as the Ribot gradient. One explanation for this gradient is consolidation of long-term memories. Several computational models of such a process have shown how consolidation can explain characteristics of…

T. Ribot's (1881) law of retrograde amnesia states that brain damage impairs recently formed memories to a greater extent than older memories, which is generally taken to imply that memories need time to consolidate. A. Jost's (1897) law of forgetting states that if 2 memories are of the same strength but different ages, the older will decay more…

Four experiments investigated the conditions in which people use a prototypic event sequence to comprehend a situation-specific sequence of events. Results of Experiment 1 confirmed Trafimow and Wyer's (1993) findings that when participants use a prototype (e.g., a cultural script) to comprehend a new sequence of events concerning a hypothetical…

The authors examined the cognitive processes that participants use in linear and nonlinear multiple-cue judgment tasks, hypothesizing that people are unable to use explicit cue abstraction in a nonlinear task, instead turning to exemplar memory. Experiment 1 confirmed that people are unable to use cue abstraction in nonlinear tasks but failed…