Of the recent advances in education-related research in Down syndrome, the characterization of the Down syndrome behavioral phenotype has become a potentially critical tool for shaping education and intervention in this population. This article briefly reviews the literature on brain-behavior connections in Down syndrome and identifies aspects of…

Williams syndrome, a genetic disorder caused by a microdeletion of approximately 25 genes on chromosome 7q11.23, is associated with mild to moderate intellectual disability or learning difficulties. Most individuals with Williams syndrome evidence a cognitive profile including relative strengths in verbal short-term memory and language, and…

Joe is a 25-year-old single male who has had problems with severe impulsivity, inattentiveness, focusing and sustaining his attention, easy distractibility, hyperactivity, a short temper, and school problems dating back to early childhood. These symptoms have resulted in marked impairment in academic, social, vocational, and daily adaptive…

Background: Monitoring brain processes in real time requires genuine subsecond resolution to follow the typical timing and frequency of neural events. Non-invasive recordings of electric (EEG/ERP) and magnetic (MEG) fields provide this time resolution. They directly measure neural activations associated with a wide variety of brain states and…

What happens when you combine senior citizens, pre-service art teachers, and elementary students? Cross-generational connections based on sharing memories, ideas, skills, laughter, tears, and creativity. The authors describe the cross-generational book exchange project. This project was initiated when a group of Central Michigan University (CMU)…

This study sought to determine a useful frequency for refreshing students' memories of complex procedures that involved a formal computer language. Students were required to execute the Microsoft Disc Operating System (MS-DOS) commands for "copy,""backup," and "restore." A total of 126 college students enrolled in six…

The purpose of this study was to gather further insight into a previous investigation of the relationship between self-chosen and program-controlled segment length of an interactive videodisk program, and performance on post- and retention tests. The initial study by Verhagen, which questioned what is the optimum length of well-designed…

Noting that although some children read aloud with apparent fluency, they fail to understand fully or remember connected discourse, this book brings together research on children who have a specific comprehension deficit. The book first provides an introduction and overview of adult and child text comprehension, and then describes the research.…

The interaction of emotion and cognition has received experimental attention, but the results have generally been weak and sometimes contradictory. Why this work on mood and memory has faltered is discussed, and a more holistic approach to the study of emotion and cognition is proposed. It is argued that a constructivist approach to memory may be…

The proposals concerning working memory outlined in this paper involve the architecture of working memory, the reasoning mechanisms that draw on it, and the ways in which working memory may develop with age. Ways of assessing task demands and children's working memory capacities are also considered. It is noted that there is long-standing evidence…

This paper discusses two related areas in which recent advancements in cognitive science and educational technology may affect instructional design theory. These are: (1) the analysis of information-to-be-learned; and (2) the linkage of learning theory to instructional prescriptions. The first area proposes extensions to current methods of…

Knowledge representations and mental models from graphically presented information were investigated for 98 college students with different levels of mathematics experience. The subjects were drawn from a remedial algebra course (n=35), a second semester calculus course (n=35), and a calculus-based statistics course (n=28); they were all exposed…

Three experiments were conducted, all employing undergraduates in college courses taught according to personalized system of instruction (PSI) principles. Experiment I examined retention as a function of the feedback delay interval in an introductory anthropology course using short-answer essay tests. Experiment II varied the feedback delay…

A study investigated developments in reasoning and memory as reflected by the discovery strategies of children taking part in a manipulative categorization and recall task. A total of 40 children (8 each of 18, 24, 30, 36, and 42 months of age) participated. Stimulus materials consisting of blocks, toy plates, discs, and plastic trees were…

More than 100 college students enrolled in a reading and study skills course participated in a study designed to show the effects of retrieval speed on adult reading comprehension. A microcomputer version of the Posner task was used to measure memory retrieval speed, and reading and listening comprehension were measured from McCall-Crabbs…