Down syndrome is the most common genetic cause of mental retardation and one of the most frequently occurring neurodevelopmental genetic disorders in children. Children with Down syndrome typically experience a constellation of symptomology that includes developmental motor and language delay, specific deficits in verbal memory, and broad…

The aim of the work presented here was to devise an activity associated with factors affecting boiling points. The intervention used a four-step constructivist-based teaching strategy, which was subsequently evaluated by a cohort of students. Data collection consisted of application of a purpose designed questionnaire consisting of four open-ended…

This study examined the representation of knowledge in text writing in 20 ten-year-old children and 20 adults in the Netherlands. The research analyzed the use of clause linking devices to compose larger text units. Special attention was given to the use of causal relational markers and the extent to which causal relations within the texts matched…

If good proficiency in L2 entails the acquisition not only of many single words but of many lexical chunks as well, it must then be asked how all this additional lexis is to be committed to long-term memory in the limited time available on non-intensive classroom-based language courses. If it is the case that a significant fraction of…

Background: Children with cerebral palsy (CP) and accompanying disabilities are prone to reading difficulties. The aim of the present study was to examine the foundations of phonological awareness in pre-school children with CP in comparison with a normally developing control group. Rhyme perception was regarded as an early indicator of…

In this experiment, 175 participants generated node-link maps or summaries using multiple, massed, or ad lib schedules while reading text on stress-related information. They rated personal relevance immediately following studying and completed tests on the information and measures of attitudes and intentions 48 hours later. Low-verbal-ability…

This paper examines the cognitive processes associated with higher-order thinking strategies--i.e., cognitive processes directly associated with the employment of knowledge in the service of problem solving and creativity--in order to more clearly define a prescribed instructional method to improve problem-solving skills. The first section of the…

Retarded subjects were compared with mental- and chronological-age matched controls on serial short-term memory (STM) tasks. Retarded subjects were inferior to the control groups on both primacy and recency items, under two recall conditions. These data are discussed in relation to possible mechanisms underlying IQ-related individual differences…

This study examined the utility of Wechsler's Deterioration Index, which compares short- and long-term memory capabilities. Three studies with a total of 120 children (ages 6-14) found that the index did not predict learning disability status but did distinguish children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder from nondisabled children.…

This study formulated and tested a mathematical model to predict learning in which the amount of correct information recalled from an audio learning task is a function of the rate of oral communication. (Contains 36 references.) (MDH)

The Pre-Kindergarten Inventory of Demonstrated Skills (Pre-KIDS) is designed to be used before the school year begins so that teachers and staff can obtain information about incoming kindergarten students. This information is intended to give teachers insight about what skills a student may or may not have before entering their classrooms. This…

Background: In recent research, verbal working memory has been proposed as a primary area of deficit for children with language impairment (LI), and therefore a source of more sensitive assessment measures. In addition, research on non-linguistic tasks has suggested that children with LI may have deficits that extend beyond the linguistic domain.…

Although the role of working memory in sentence comprehension has received substantial attention, the nature of this relationship remains unclear. The purpose of this study was to examine the interaction between general, nonverbal working memory (WM) and sentence parsing (SP) in normal English-speaking adults. Accuracy and reaction times were…

In two studies, 10-year-olds from 2 German special schools as well as typically developing children of the same chronological age (CA controls) or the same mental age (MA controls) were compared on several aspects of working memory functions (i.e., size and input quality of the phonological store, speed and automatic activation of the subvocal…

Competitive Scrabble players spend a mean of 4.5 hr a week memorizing words from the official Scrabble dictionary. When asked if they learn word meanings when studying word lists, only 6.4% replied "always," with the rest split between "sometimes" and "rarely or never." Number of years of play correlated positively with expertise ratings,…