Whereas past research has demonstrated that children's beliefs about the real world can influence their memory for events, the role of fantasy beliefs in children's recall remains largely unexplored. We examine this topic in 5- and 6-year-olds by focusing on how belief in a familiar fantasy figure, namely the Tooth Fairy, is related to children's…

A research on how synaptic plasticity is abnormally regulated in fragile X syndrome and how this abnormality can be reversed by therapeutic interventions is presented. Fragile X syndrome is a disorder of synaptic plasticity that contributes to abnormal development and interferes with normal learning and memory.

This paper addresses the nature of the temporary storage buffer used in implicit or statistical learning. Kuhn and Dienes [Kuhn, G., & Dienes, Z. (2005). Implicit learning of nonlocal musical rules: implicitly learning more than chunks. "Journal of Experimental Psychology-Learning Memory and Cognition," 31(6) 1417-1432] showed that people could…

While cognitive skill learning is normally acquired implicitly through frontostrial circuitry in healthy individuals, neuroimaging studies suggest that patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) do so by activating alternate, intact brain areas associated with explicit memory processing. To further test this hypothesis, 10 patients with PD and 12…

Theories of grounded cognition propose that modal simulations underlie cognitive representation of concepts [Barsalou, L. W. (1999). "Perceptual symbol systems." "Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 22"(4), 577-660; Barsalou, L. W. (2008). "Grounded cognition." "Annual Review of Psychology, 59", 617-645]. Based…

Ovarian hormones influence memory formation by eliciting changes in neural activity. The effects of various concentrations of progesterone (P4) on synaptic transmission and plasticity associated with long-term potentiation (LTP) and long-term depression (LTD) were studied using in vitro hippocampal slices. Extracellular studies show that the…

The molecular activities which take place inside neurones during synaptic plasticity development are examined. The molecular events during memory consolidation and learning are investigated.

In October 2006, a New Hampshire police officer named Michael Briggs was shot to death in an alley. His accused killer, Michael Addison, has been charged with capital murder. It is the state's first death-penalty case in more than 30 years, and it is racially fraught: Addison is African-American, and Briggs was white. New Hampshire has a long list…

Directed forgetting and prospective memory methods were combined to examine differences in the control of memory access. Between studying two lists of target words, participants were either instructed to forget the first list, or to continue remembering the first list. After study participants performed a lexical decision task with an additional…

According to temporal distinctiveness models, items that are temporally isolated from their neighbors during list presentation are more distinct and thus should be recalled better. Contrary to that expectation of distinctiveness views, much recent evidence has shown that forward short-term serial recall is unaffected by temporal isolation. We…

The protein synthesis-dependent form of hippocampal long-term potentiation (late-LTP) is thought to underlie memory. Its induction requires a distinct stimulation strength, and the common opinion is that only repeated tetani result in late-LTP whereas as single tetanus only reveals a transient early-LTP. Properties of LTP induction were compared…

The dissertation evaluated the ability of adult literacy learners with dyslexia to assess their cognitive abilities in two separate domains: reading and memory. This study also evaluated the effect that one-on-one tutoring had on the learner's ability to accurately self-assess these cognitive abilities. Twenty adult literacy learners (n = 20) with…

With the global expansion of technology our reading platform has changed from traditional text to predominantly hypertext. Little consideration has been given to how the shift in reading platforms might help or hinder children's reading comprehension. The purpose of this study was to compare reading comprehension in computer-based and paper-based…

The "Barton Reading & Spelling System"[R] is a one-to-one tutoring system designed to improve the reading, writing and spelling skills of children, teenagers, or adults who struggle due to dyslexia or another learning disability. Although the program is designed to be one-to-one, it may also be used in a small group setting, but each…

It is widely assumed that older adults suffer a deficit in the psychological processes that underlie remembering of contextual or source information. This conclusion is based in large part on empirical interactions, including disordinal ones, that reveal differential effects of manipulations of memory strength on recognition in young and old…