Individuals with low working memory capacity (e.g. preschoolers) are more prone to goal neglect, or a failure to execute a goal even though it is understood. We examined the role of goal neglect in performance on the Dimensional Change Card Sort by including 'redundant' cards that could be sorted without attending to the rules, as well as the…

Three experiments examined repeated retention testing effects in a contextual interference (CI) protocol. Retention was assessed at 10 min and 24 hr following acquisition or at just 24-hr for the one-test conditions. Experiments 1 and 2 used speeded-response key-pressing tasks. Dependent measures were total time and errors. Experiment 3 used…

A single factor (i.e., general intelligence) can account for much of an individuals' performance across a wide variety of cognitive tests. However, despite this factor's robustness, the underlying process is still a matter of debate. To address this question, we developed a novel battery of learning tasks to assess the general learning abilities…

During episodic recognition tests, meaningful stimuli such as words can engender both conscious retrieval (explicit memory) and facilitated access to meaning that is distinct from the awareness of remembering (conceptual implicit memory). Neuroimaging investigations of one type of memory are frequently subject to the confounding influence of the…

Contextual fear conditioning was maintained over a 15-day retention interval suggesting no forgetting of the conditioning experience. However, a more subtle generalization test revealed that, as the retention interval increased, rats showed enhanced generalized fear to an altered context. Preexposure to the training context prior to conditioning,…

Persistent drug seeking/taking behavior involves the consolidation of memory. With each drug use, the memory may be reactivated and reconsolidated to maintain the original memory. During reactivation, the memory may become labile and susceptible to disruption; thus, molecules involved in plasticity should influence acquisition and/or…

We examined the effects of presentation modality and learning style preference on people's ability to learn and remember unfamiliar melodies and sentences. In Experiment 1, we gauged musicians' and nonmusicians' learning efficiency for meaningful and less meaningful melodies as well as sentences when presented visually or auditorily. In Experiment…

In this paper, I analyze the theorization of adolescent femininity within three popular cultural texts about girls and schooling written by women and published in the United States during the 1990s. The books, referred to as "Ophelia narratives," include Lyn Mikel Brown and Carol Gilligan's (1992) "Meeting at the Crossroads," Mary Pipher's (1994)…

Two groups of rats were trained in a symbolic delayed matching-to-sample task with a 0-s delay to discriminate sample stimuli that consisted of sequences of tone bursts. For one group, sequences varied in number with total sequence duration controlled. For the other group, total sequence duration, sum of the tone durations, and sum of the gap…

Background: To investigate the effects of methylphenidate (MPH) on components of working memory (WM) in attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and determine the responsiveness of WM measures to MPH. Methods: Participants were a clinical sample of 50 children and adolescents with ADHD, aged 6 to 16 years old, who participated in an acute…

Reminder cues can impact remembering in infancy in multiple ways. Infants typically show highly specific remembering following a reminder, or reactivation procedure, but in some instances, (such as size perception) have demonstrated an ability to remember when given a cue or prime that differs in certain specific characteristics, relative to the…

Visual short-term memory (VSTM) plays an important role in visual cognition. Although objects are located on different 3-dimensional (3-D) surfaces in the real world, how VSTM capacity may be influenced by the presence of multiple 3-D surfaces has never been examined. By manipulating binocular disparities of visual displays, the authors found that…

Many memory models focus on encoding of sequences by excitatory recurrent synapses in region CA3 of the hippocampus. However, data and modeling suggest an alternate mechanism for encoding of sequences in which interference between theta frequency oscillations encodes the position within a sequence based on spatial arc length or time. Arc length…

A quantitative computational theory of the operation of the CA3 system as an attractor or autoassociation network is described. Based on the proposal that CA3-CA3 autoassociative networks are important for episodic or event memory in which space is a component (place in rodents and spatial view in primates), it has been shown behaviorally that the…

The purpose of this exploratory and small-scale study was to examine the instructional effects of different chunking strategies used to complement animated instruction in terms of facilitating achievement of higher order learning objectives. Eighty-five students were randomly assigned to three treatment groups: animated program instruction, simple…