Studies of orientation perception in infants and children have revealed an "oblique effect," that is, a performance advantage for tasks involving horizontal and vertical stimulus orientations compared with tasks involving oblique orientations. The two studies reported support the hypothesis that oblique stimulus orientations are treated…

Production frequency of exemplars for 16 categories was obtained from institutionalized mentally retarded adults and compared with those of nonretarded children, adolescents, and adults with the typicality ratings of the same retarded Ss. Production frequency of exemplars by retarded and nonretarded persons was remarkably similar. (Author/CL)

Consistent with findings that infants respond to the orientation of a visual stimulus in a categorical-like manner, data obtained from two- and three-month-old infants viewing horizontal/vertical, non-mirror-image oblique, and mirror-image oblique stimulus pairs indicate that elements of oblique/oblique stimulus pairs were more frequently confused…

Both retarded and nonretarded adults (N=26) failed to benefit from opportunities to mentally rehearse their criterion movement over the retention interval, suggesting that strategic differences between the groups cannot explain the poorer performances of the retarded Ss. The retarded Ss appeared to have problems remembering the sensory…

Emphasizes the social and interpersonal aspects of actions, especially as described in Soviet psychology. Argues that remembering is essential for intentional action. Intentional action is derived from the communication and cooperative relations between two people. (RH)

Wechsler Memory Scale Memory Quotient (WMS MQ) 12 points below Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale Full-Scale IQ (WAIS FSIQ) may indicate memory impairment. Investigated the relation of FSIQ to MQ when the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised rather than the WAIS is used. Discrepancy between FSIQ and MQ occurred less often with WAIS-R than with…

Twenty-six children (ages 9-18) who had recovered from Reye's syndrome (characterized by lethargy, disorientation, personality changes, and decreased consciousness) were tested for possible memory deficits. In reviewing school histories, an unexpected finding was the disproportionately high number of students who were learning disabled before…

Evidence is presented that both reading disabled (RD) and normal reading attention deficit disordered (ADD) children are at high risk to become numerically incompetent adults. It is theorized that this incompetence may be rooted in failure to memorize basic number combinations. (Author/CL)

Discusses research showing that material people learn when in a high arousal state and material they learn when in a normal arousal state is subsequently best recalled when they are in a similar arousal state. Speculates that this effect may partially underlie mood cuing, mood-related material from memory. (EKN)

Argues that the study of the life course is necessarily a historical form of inquiry that demands acknowledgment of narrative structure. Because the data of narration derive from experience, the idea of development can only be placed within the realm of subjectivity. (RH)

Argues that, as scientists learn more about the chemistry and physiology of the human brain, it is incumbent upon educators and educational psychologists to begin to build models of brain function that reflect growing scientific knowledge. (FL)

Assesses children's recall performance using three memory instructions: standard free recall, repetition, and categorical processing. Recall performance was about equal for standard versus repetition and superior when category processing is used, especially with highly representative items. Concludes that at both 7 years and 10 years the…

The performance of 10 mildly mentally retarded adults on recognition memory tasks in a fixed-set and varied-set procedure was compared with that of nonretarded control subjects. Results suggest that retarded adults use different processing strategies in the two procedures and that rate of processing increases with increasing mental age. (Author/CL)

The effect of practice on recognition of mildly mentally retarded adults was investigated in two experiments using the S. Sternberg memory scanning paradigm. Although the generally poorer performance of retarded adults in this task may reflect some structural impairment, the initial level of deficiency is reduced by practice. (Author/CL)

Provides comments on research studies related to memory systems, considering those exploring the nature of memory traces. One researcher suggests that memory trace circuits are extremely localized (as opposed to being diffuse), such that a lesion in a rabbit's brain can completely destroy the trace for a particular learned response. (JN)