The relationship between reading achievement and ability to process verbal information in achieving and nonachieving fourth-grade readers is examined. Evaluation of verbal processing abilities indicated that achieving readers performed better on all abilities measured except automatic word processing. (Author/PN)

The utility of the keyword method is assessed in three experiments where eighth-grade students were asked to learn the purported accomplishments of various individuals, as described in several short fictitious passages. The method appears to hold promise for improving students' learning of a variety of school content. (Author/AL)

Specific comparisons for a categorized set of items indicated that recall of detailed drawings and outlines was superior to recall of words. For an uncategorized set, outlines were recalled significantly better than pictures and both were recalled better than words. (Author/PN)

The article lists 50 English/Spanish cognate words (related by descent from the same ancestral language) and provides three strategies for using the words instructionally with Mexican American children. (PHR)

Incentive motivation effects on stimulus encoding of elementary school students was investigated by pairing words associated with two levels of semantic elaboration with two levels of monetary rewards and testing through recall. (CM)

This study examines some relationships pertaining to socioeconomic status and cognitive ability patterns in fourth graders. Specifically, it explores the relative merits of Jensen's hierarchical theory of two levels of cognitive ability, in contrast to a process scheme, positing two parallel modes of coding information. (Editor/SJL)

The notion of strength is defined in several alternative ways for chains of associations connected in series and in parallel. Network strength theory is extended to handle retrieval dynamics for a network of associations, in a manner that permits various degrees of serial versus parallel manner that permits various degrees of serial versus…

This article for speech language pathologists discusses theories of language learning and use that are consistent with whole language, including lexical contrast, connectionism, schemata, event representations, and parsing. Direct application is made to intervention, and examples of interactions between speech language pathologists and children…

A comparison of the performance of children (ages 6-12) with visual impairments (n=15) and sighted children (n=15) on two tasks involving inferences found some differences between the two groups when the information was visual, but not when it was nonvisual. Visual impairment affected some aspects of a word association task. (Contains references.)…

Examines semantic errors produced by normal and aphasic speakers on a picture naming test for their phonological similarity to the targets they replace. A second study examines phonological relationships within sets of semantically related words and shows there is no tendency for these words to share phonological characteristics. (35 references)…

Most children who are congenitally deafblind are severely delayed in their communication development and many will not achieve symbolic understanding and expression. This article discusses developmental markers cited in the research literature as predictive of or facilitative of the development of symbolism. These markers include the growth toward…

Children improve at word learning during the 2nd year of life--sometimes dramatically. This fact has suggested a change in mechanism, from associative learning to a more referential form of learning. This article presents an associative exemplar-based model that accounts for the improvement without a change in mechanism. It provides a unified…

The aim of this study was to elucidate the word decoding strategies of Hebrew readers with pre-lingually-acquired, severe hearing impairments as opposed to regular Hebrew readers, and to determine their efficiency. The research paradigm used to clarify these issues asked participants to perform a sequence of three learning tasks, calling for the…

Three experiments explored the effect of affectively congruent or incongruent primes on evaluation responses to positive or negative valenced targets (the "affective priming" effect). Experiment 1 replicated the basic affective priming effect with Spanish nouns: reaction time for evaluative responses (pleasant/unpleasant) were slower on…