A Pulitzer-Prize-winning playwright recollects his early school days, his intense dislike of orthodox schooling, and his development as an author. (JD)

Thirty fourth-grade children were exposed in pairs to a series of slides and invited to take turns asking questions. Results showed retention to be significantly better for information acquired through the child's own questions as opposed to the information acquired through the partner's questions. (Author/JMB)

The spatial and temporal components of a serial position recall task were experimentally manipulated in a study using kindergarten, first grade, and second grade children to determine the factors involved in the primacy effect. (BRT)

Investigates whether 8-year-olds can be taught a mental imagery strategy to improve their memory of prose they read. Results of the study showed that the children taught the strategy answered more questions than the group who did not receive those instructions. (Author/DEP)

Dictation provides practice in concentrated listening and understanding, increases the attention span, strengthens the memory, and provides training in accurate recording. (DD)

Five experiments studied operations of conceptual masking--the reduction of conceptual memory performance for an initial stimulus when it is followed by a masking picture process. The subjects were 337 undergraduates at the University of Washington (Seattle). Conceptual masking is distinguished from perceptual masking. (TJH)

Investigated whether young children (ages 2-5) could use spatial categorization as a mnemonic strategy. Three experiments found the children capable of spatially organizing objects as a strategy in the service of future retrieval. There were clear developmental trends in the deployment of categorization. (SKC)

Investigated deferred imitation ability for six actions in 14-month-old infants. After a week's delay, infants were tested on their ability to imitate the actions.Those who had been exposed to modeling produced significantly higher instances of the target actions. (SKC)

Describes two experiments showing that experienced readers use text signals to guide their attention to relevant information in a text. Indicates that subjects (1) took longer to read a summary sentence if it was signaled in advance, especially poor readers, and (2) recalled important information better if the information was signaled. (JD)

Analyzed the performance of Alzheimer's patients (N=141) on the Mini-Mental State Examination. Performance on all items showed significant negative correlation with the duration of the illness. The most difficult item was "recall," and the improvement in recall was obtained with cuing. (Author/ABB)

Aphasic (N=15) and non-brain-damaged adults listened to and retold two narrative stories three times in succession. Both aphasic and non-brain-damaged subjects were affected by story structure and increased the amount of information retold across retellings. Non-brain-damaged subjects retold slightly more (statistically insignificant) information…

The use of a rehearsal strategy by 10-, 12-, and 14-year-old mildly mentally retarded children and adolescents (N=39) was investigated using a self-paced recall readiness task. The task allowed Ss to study items in any order as many times as desired. Each group used rehearsal, as indicated by increasing study time patterns and the number of…

The ANDS (A Natural Deduction System) model, described in this article, is a psychological theory of propositional reasoning that makes explicit assumptions about memory and control in deduction. A computer simulation of the ANDS model yields proofs similar to those of untrained subjects. (Author/BW)