Two additional studies in long-term sentence memory were conducted to determine if certain critical relationships predicted by a cognitive model of test anxiety could be strengthened. Using the same sentence materials combined with different procedures, reliable test anxiety - memory relationships were generated by not constraining the initial…

Some of the issues associated with the lack of a precisely stated theory of memory organization are considered. The first section provides an overview of the concept of organization. Emphasis is on problems associated with the definition of organization, especially the distinction between organization as a process and as the product of a process.…

The study investigated the ability of 80 mildly mentally retarded students (19 to 17 years old) to make accurate judgments of textual idea importance and to differentially and spontaneously remember important rather than unimportant ideas. Ss were assigned to one of six conditions which differed as a function of whether importance judgments were…

THE EFFECTS OF FAMILIARITY ON THE PROCESSING OF STIMULUS AND MEMORIAL INFORMATION WERE INVESTIGATED IN TWO TASKS--ONE WHICH SUPPOSEDLY REQUIRED ONLY THE PERCEPTUAL RECOGNITION OF EACH STIMULUS WORD (E TASK) AND ONE WHICH REQUIRED A MEANINGFUL CATEGORIZATION OF EACH STIMULUS WORD (C TASK). FIFTY UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN UNDERGRADUATES WHO WERE PAID…

A study was conducted to determine if there was a relationship between the cognitive styles of learners and their ability to correctly identify previously seen pictorial materials presented in color or black and white. Fifty-three third and fourth grade students from the Pittsburgh Public School System served as subjects for the study. Testing…

The levels of processing framework for understanding memory development has generated little empirical or theoretical work that furthers an understanding of the developmental memory system. Although empirical studies by those testing the levels of processing framework have demonstrated that mnemonic strategies employed by children are the critical…

Two experiments were conducted to establish the psychological validity of the text type distinction. In the first, 20 college students sorted 12 texts on the basis of their similarities. The resultant sortings were subjected to a clustering analysis. Despite the fact that other bases for grouping texts existed--a number of pairs of semantically…

Psychological research concerning several aspects of the relationship between existing knowledge schemata and the processing of text is summarized in this report. The first section is concerned with dynamic processes of story understanding, with emphasis on the integration of information. The role of prior knowledge in accommodating parts of…

A new approach to the study of memory, "metamemory," takes as its central task the description and explanation of what children know or understand about the nature of memory, the characteristics of their own memories, and the specific techniques they use to store and retrieve information in different task situations. In this study of…

A sentence "pragmatically implies" another sentence when information in the first sentence leads the hearer to expect something that is neither explicitly stated nor necessarily implied by the original sentence. Thus, the sentence "The safe-cracker put the match to the fuse" pragmatically implies that "the safe-cracker lit…

Memory storage and retrieval of learning disabled (LD) and normal children at two age levels (8-9 years and 11-12 years) were compared using a multitrial free recall paradigm. Stimuli were two lists of 20 high frequency nouns. Each child was tested individually on both lists on different days; one presentation was blocked, one random with…

The availability of semantic information in storage and the accessibility of that information for retrieval was studied with 40 retarded and 40 nonretarded adolescents. In Experiment I, Ss were required to retrieve information from semantic categories, as well as judge whether specific items were members of a given category. Results showed that…

If a series of verbal units is presented for study, and if a unit occurs two or more times in the series, the practice schedule for these multiple occurrences may be massed or distributed. In massed practice (MP) the item occupies adjacent positions; in distributed practice (DP) successive occurences are separated by at least one other unit. The…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of underlining on material which subjects were expected to learn. The subjects were 120 female undergraduate students enrolled in an introductory psychology course. All subjects were presented with a booklet containing instructions on the first page followed by a passage of approximately 700…

The purpose of this study was to systematically investigate the effects of various orienting tasks on the recall of prose material. In particular, subjects were asked to read a prose passage while performing either a semantic (outlining the material) or a nonsemantic (circling e's) orienting task under either incidental or intentional recall…