Examines the impact of listeners on speakers' later memory for events. Shows that attentive listeners facilitate long-term memory, whereas situations with distracted listeners are difficult to distinguish from situations with no listener and with no recounting at all. (SR)

Examined the effects of postevent reorganization of events on memory for the original events in 4 experiments involving 319 college students. Results show that biased memory results from the reorganizing schema guiding the retelling perspective and the effects of rehearsing specific information in retelling. (SLD)

Fourier analyses of children's behaviors were conducted over a sequence of five consecutive study/recall trials to identify temporal patterns. Findings pointed to a global strategy in which children learn the items' categories before learning them individually. There was little qualitative difference in temporal organization for second graders and…

A mnemonic is suggested to help evaluators remember the five guiding principles of evaluation developed by the American Evaluation Association. A character from F. Baum's "Wizard of Oz" is associated with each of these: (1) systematic inquiry; (2) competence; (3) respect for people; (4) responsibility to general and public welfare; and…

Reviews three theories of how we retain order in memory and their predictions for errors people make when they recall a sequence incorrectly. A new model of short-term memory is presented, the Start-End Model (SEM), in which the positions of items in a sequence are coded relative to the sequence start and end. (SLD)

Explores the encoding of causal inferences in memory records for texts. Focuses on one class of causal inference: that which links the superordinate goals of characters and the outcomes whereby they are achieved. Suggests that a given superordinate goal inference is represented as a link between the idea units corresponding to the goal and how it…

Informants' reports were compared with death certificates for 328 deceased respondents to determine whether relatives and others can provide valid information about survey respondents' deaths. About two-thirds of the informants accurately reported the complete date of death. Percentage of correct reports varied by relationship between informant…

The first of three studies established the feasibility of using compact disk-interactive (CD-I) with older adults (n=34); a second study ascertained the interest of 74 older adults in learning about memory interventions. In a third study, 24 older adults used a prototype CD-I memory training program. The studies supported the viability of CD-I as…

Proposes an interactive learning model to serve as a psychological foundation for the field of instructional design theory. Topics include complexity theory, cognitive models of learning, cognitive and affective domains, sensory receptors component (memory) and the effects of external stimuli, affects component, cognitive strategies, and knowledge…

Examined association between speech rate and memory span in children from kindergarten to sixth grade. Found that speech rate for word triples shared variance with memory span independent of speech rate for single words. Speech rate for word triples was largely redundant with age in explaining additional variation in memory span when effects of…

Six experiments examined whether there were circumstances in which toddlers could use landmarks for spatial reorientation. Findings confirmed that geometric information is used for reorientation by toddlers, but give reason to doubt that the use of this information is achieved using a module impenetrable to nongeometric information. (Author/KB)

In their commentaries, Carver, Richmond and DeBoer pose several challenging and insightful questions in response to our target article. Two key themes emerged from their commentaries, which are important in the field of infant memory research. The first concerns the use of deferred imitation as a paradigm, and its relationship to other methods of…

The interactive effects of physiological reactivity and social support on children's memory were examined. Four- to 6-year-olds completed a laboratory protocol during which autonomic responses and salivary cortisol were measured. Memory was assessed shortly afterward and 2 weeks later. During the second interview, children were questioned by a…

There are plenty of paths to poetry but few are as accessible as retracing ones own memories. When students are asked to write about something they remember, they are given them the gift of choosing from events that are important enough to recall. They remember because what happened was funny or scary or embarrassing or heartbreaking or silly.…

A mathematical model of working-memory capacity limits is proposed on the key assumption of mutual interference between items in working memory. Interference is assumed to arise from overwriting of features shared by these items. The model was fit to time-accuracy data of memory-updating tasks from four experiments using nonlinear mixed effect…