On balance and buzzer tasks, different developmental trends were found for recall of covariance ideas than for recall of explanation ideas. There were developmental increases in the frequency of "if" and "because" statements used to describe causal sequences. Third- and fifth-graders systematically paired "if" with…

Interviews with 180 second, fourth, and sixth graders concerning control beliefs, agency beliefs, and means-ends beliefs showed that only agency beliefs were strongly and consistently related to cognitive performance. (RH)

Two studies investigated 320 college students' knowledge about the effectiveness of alternative memory strategies for different tasks and the relationship of this knowledge to strategy use and task performance. Results indicate that students did know the relative effectiveness of different strategies, supporting current models of metamemory. (SLD)

Presents a background and rationale for examining personal beliefs of efficacy and control as related to adulthood cognition and memory. Focuses on the self-efficacy construct and its utility in studying cognitive behavior in adults. Highlights related work on achievement behavior in children. (RJC)

Describes the development and psychometric properties of the Memory Self-Efficacy Questionnaire (MSEQ), a self-report measure of memory ability and confidence. The MSEQ and its alternate versions were examined in 3 experiments involving 558 adults. Satisfactory estimates of internal consistency and test-retest stability were obtained. (RJC)

A study examined the relationships between self-reported academic burnout, perceived dental educational stress, and memory performance among 46 first-year dental students. In addition, the observed relationship between negative adjectives used for self-description and memory focused attention on the possible role of mood state in memory…

The hypothesis that describing a visual memory can result in recoding interference was investigated in a series of 6 experiments with 518 college students. Collective results were consistent with the hypothesis; verbalizing memory can produce a verbally biased memory representation that can interfere with the original visual memory. (SLD)

The relationship between memory and reasoning was investigated in three experiments involving children in grades one, four, and seven, and college students. Results indicated that performance was dependent on subjects' abilities to integrate relevant subskills, rather than on deficient reasoning or missing subskills. (RJC)

Discussion of memory for text information focuses on an earlier study which appeared to show that it is better for students to study a summary of a textbook chapter than to study the chapter itself. Topics discussed include recognition memory, recall, how to test memory, and psychological research. (10 references) (LRW)

The study of Down Syndrome (N=16), other mentally retarded, and non retarded subjects (all matched for mental age) found that Down Syndrome subjects showed significantly poorer recall of auditorially presented stimuli than the other two groups (which did not differ). (Author/DB)

Observed mothers playing with their 40-month-old children and eliciting their children's memories of shared experiences. Cluster analysis found two distinct maternal interaction styles in each of these contexts. Individual mothers' styles varied across the contexts, suggesting that infant-mother dyads must be observed in multiple contexts to…

This paper examines the various types and functions of mnemonic strategies that may be used to expedite recall in students with learning disabilities (LD), reviews research in this area, and outlines avenues for research. The paper concludes that mnemonic strategies have an untapped potential for improving LD students' learning, retention, and…

The medieval writer, the nun Hildegard von Bingen, learned Latin without any formal instruction in it. Her case is described as an example of language acquisition by hearing it read, sung, and expounded and by visualizing it as though it were written down in a kind of phonetic script. (21 references) (Author/LB)

Eight- through 11-year-olds watched photographic slides of faces of former preschool classmates and controls, once while their skin conductance was measured and again while reporting whether or not they recognized the faces. Both verbal report and skin conductance data showed low but above-chance differentiation between children's response to…

Comparison of external memory strategies in 31 children (ages 11 and 17) with mild mental retardation and 64 children without mental retardation found no differences between children with mental retardation and their age peers in frequency of use of object-oriented strategies. For all groups, external strategies were used more frequently than…