This research was designed to investigate sentence comprehension and recall through an examination of cue effectiveness. It was expected that a cue which contained information about an object that was a probable inference from the sentence would be an effective recall cue. (Author/RK)

This research investigates why it is that the more concrete the subject noun phrase of a sentence, the more likely the predicate is to be recalled when the subject noun phrase is the cue. (Editor/RK)

One possibility explored in the present study is that semantic encoding and, consequently, the usefulness of interitem relations in recall depend not only on attention to meaning but also on the particular attributes of meaning on which one's attention is focused during study of the words. (Author)

Examined 4-, 6- and 8-year-old children's recency and frequency judgments, using drawings of common objects. Found accuracy of recency and frequency judgments improved between 4 and 6 years of age. Found no evidence that children in any age-group based their recency judgments on trace-strength information in episodic recall; found some evidence…

Examined the effects of juror gender and victim gender on two types of sexual abuse cases. Subjects were 323 university students. Findings suggest a relationship between juror gender, victim gender, and case types. Male jurors made fine-tuned discriminations based on variables such as case type and victim gender. (RJM)

Explored self-serving biases in use of statistical "law of large numbers" (LLN) principle. Found that, on goal-enhancing and goal-neutral problems, adolescents were more prone to schema-based memory intrusions and adults were more prone to exemplar-based intrusions. Both age groups used LLN more frequently on goal-threatening than on…

This study compared the details provided in eyewitness accounts of British Columbia (Canada) children (ages 4-6) interviewed with a verbal interview against those interviewed with anatomically-neutral dolls in addition to a verbal interview. Findings indicate no main effect of interview type on the amount or accuracy of the accounts. (CR)

Examines whether errors in memory (specifically source confusions) contribute to the link between television viewing and social reality judgments. Finds that a manipulation of the visual similarity of the news and fictional programming affected subjects' tendency to make source confusions. (RS)

Examined whether age-related working memory deficits in learning disabled (LD) readers across four age groups (7, 10, 13, and 20) reflected retrieval efficiency or storage capacity problems. Found that LD readers' working memory performance was inferior to skilled readers' on verbal and visual-spatial working memory tasks across all ages.…

Five experiments demonstrated that 6.5-month-olds perseverated in a violation-of-expectation task to examine reasoning about width information in containment events. After watching a familiarization event in which a ball was lowered into a wide container, infants failed to detect the violation when the same ball was lowered into a container half…

Two experiments examined the influence of a delay between learning and reproducing locations on 7-, 9- and 11-year-old children's memory for location. Findings indicated that bias toward category centers when replacing objects in their original locations increased following an intervening delay, as predicted by the Category-Adjustment model, with…

This study compared perception and production of Korean speech sounds by college students who had spoken Korean regularly for a few years during childhood to those of novice Korean learners and childhood hearers who had heard Korean regularly during childhood but had spoken Korean only minimally. Findings revealed long-term benefits of childhood…

Investigated developmental trends associated with the Deese/Roediger-McDermott false-memory effect, the role of distinctive information, and subjective experience of true/false memories. Found that 5-year-olds recalled more false memories than adults but no age differences in recognition of critical lures. Distinctive information reduced false…

Interviews Oliver Sacks, a doctor and author of eight books. Discusses his newest book, his upbringing, and memory. Explains how the medical profession influences his writing. (PM)

A study involving 33 college students and adults performing a cued recall task found that recall performance was more sensitive to length of the retention interval in the presence of unassociated cues than associated cues. This contrasts with results from analyses of informational demands from the environment in previous studies. (SLD)