A total of 60 children four-, five-, and six-years-old were assigned to memory or control groups and told they could play with toys. Mnemonic mediators were identified on the basis of differences in the behavior of children given memory and play instructions. Use of mnemonic mediators differentiated groups at all ages and increased with age. (RH)

Presents several reconceptualizations of adult cognitive development and its relation to everyday problem solving. Argues that investigation of relations between adult cognitive development and everyday problem solving may be facilitated through causal modeling that includes task characteristics, social context, and personality and motivational…

Examines hypothesis that lack of structural constraint limits children's ability to use context and category cues to search associative memory for episodic information. Second- and fifth-graders and college adults were shown word triplets and asked to recall the final target member of each triplet in a cued recall task. (Author/BE)

Reports on four experiments on how differences in utterance relations influence understanding anaphors, that is, devices that refer back to previously mentioned words or concepts in a discourse. Findings suggest that readers may selectively keep information available if it is likely to be needed for interpreting subsequent input. (SED)

The study used the semantic strategy of stories linking to-be-remembered items and a serial-recall requirement with 27 educable mentally retarded adolescents. In comparison to control subjects, Ss recalled more in the early trials of original learning, but retention after eight months was comparable for the two conditions. (Author/DB)

Free recall performance of children in grades three, five, seven, and nine and of adults was assessed according to a list of categorically related words. Results indicated that seventh and ninth graders were more apt to use associative relations to begin category clusters than were younger children or adults. (Author/BE)

Short-term memory data showed that differences between groups were confined mainly to recall of recency items; within the three older groups, superior readers were superior to competent readers, who in turn were superior to disabled readers; younger competent readers were superior to older disabled readers, despite similarity in reading test…

Two-digit span tasks compared the distraction performance of 32 learning disabled (LD) high schoolers and non LD Ss. No differential distraction effect was found on the first set (matching nondistraction and distraction conditions). In set two, (distraction condition was designed to be more discriminating), a differential distraction effect was…

A total of 60 first- and third-grade children were divided into three treatment groups receiving task-specific strategy instructions and/or metacognitive training. Results were discussed in terms of the interactive nature of knowledge, process, and motivational variables as determinants of strategy transfer. (Author/CI)

Presents a hypothesis about the biochemical processes involved in memory storage. The postulated mechanism is initiated by a signal that is unusual but not unlikely to occur and produces an irreversible change in a key component of synaptic chemistry. Other features of the mechanism and experiments supporting the hypothesis are considered. (JN)

A study involving dyslexic children (10-14 years old) with average and high reasoning ability and nondyslexic children with and without superior mathematical ability suggested that the high reasoning dyslexic Ss had similar abstract reasoning ability but lower computation and memory skills than mathematically gifted nondyslexic Ss. (CL)

Reports on experiments that address the question of whether pictures and the words that name them access a common conceptual representation. Results suggest that the major component in a lexical or objective decision is a form-specific memory representation of the work or visual object. (EKN)

Calculated mean scores for older persons utilizing data from previous studies that measured Wechsler Memory Scale performance in healthy samples and compared with those of younger adults and a sample of neurologically impaired age (N=384). Statistical analysis indicated significant differences in the performance of different age groups. (JAC)

To study ear asymmetry during monaural stimulation, 80 listeners were asked to recall the word which followed a probe word in 40 10-word lists. Ear asymmetry during monaural stimulation appeared to be related to competition between incoming and rehearsed stimuli during central memory processing. (Author/CL)

The study examined the performance of four autistic boys trained to a criterion of 80 percent correct on noun labels. After training, one set of labels was reviewed twice a week for nine weeks (summer vacation); the other set received no additional training. Performance on both sets was then retested. Data are seen to support need for year-round…