Mnemonic and non-mnemonic pictures were used as teaching aids with 67 learning-disabled students in grades seven, eight, and nine in reading expository passages about the extinction of dinosaurs. Both types of pictures aided students' free recall, while only mnemonic pictures facilitated recall of the plausibility order of the passages. (TJH)

Forty-six full-term and 54 high-risk preterm infants were tested at six, seven, and/or eight months of age (corrected age for preterms) on assessments of visual recognition memory and tactual-visual cross-modal transfer. Scores significantly predicted Stanford-Binet IQ scores. Stability coefficients attained the highest degree of predictive…

This case study illustrates the highly significant language difficulties, marked memory deficits, and propensity for physical aggression following temporal lobe damage brought about by herpes encephalitis, and presents the usefulness of a new diagnostic measure in delineating such a variable cognitive pattern. (Author)

The article examines the subgroup (15-20 percent) of learning disabled children who have problems with immediate verbatim recall of sequences of verbal information. Processing inefficiency in coding phonological language features leads to academic deficiencies in fluent word identification and word analysis skills. (Author/DB)

Outlines a cognitive model of the self-system, detailing the structural representation of self-relevant information in memory and the processes involved in retrieving and utilizing this information. Reports five experiments supporting the model. (MS)

Five experiments examined the extent and nature of the referential source errors of 5- to 10-year-old children who listened to stories containing a referential utterance. The results supported five conclusions about children's confusion of different sources of information in referential communication. (SW)

Forgetting can take place even when the abuse occurred when the child was older, had experienced dramatic events surrounding the abuse, or had suffered repeated molestation. It is argued here that research suggests that memory of child sexual abuse may be influenced by more than the "simple forgetting" that E. Loftus et al. suggested.…

This study delineates modes of thinking that differentiate exceptionally gifted children from more moderately gifted peers. Cognitive differences include viewing the simple as complex, a need for precision, viewing the complex as simple, abstract reasoning ability, early grasp of essential elements of an issue, high capacity for empathy,…

Presents the first stage in a research effort developing a detailed computational model of working memory. The central feature of the model is counterintuitive. It is assumed that there is a primacy gradient of activation across successive list items. A second stage of the model is influenced by the combined effects of the primacy gradient and…

Two experiments were designed to examine whether gist memories are constructive inferences from verbatim memories or whether they are stored in parallel with the encoding of verbatim information. Being able to remember verbatim numbers did not help preschoolers and second graders remember either the global gist or the pairwise gist of those…

Three experiments examined whether children, like adults, can surpress interference effects when retrieving from long-term memory to solve arithmetic problems. Found that the associations between a number pair and its sum or product are of sufficient strength during the elementary school years to produce interference effects, depending on the age…

Two studies involving 195 undergraduates investigated memory errors occurring when the context standard used in judging target behaviors differs from the category norm standard available when behaviors are recalled. Results support a "natural" tendency to use the current categorical meaning of a judgment to reconstruct the referent of…

The effect of performance feedback on memory strategy use, performance evaluation, and recall was assessed with 36 normal junior high school students and 33 students with mild mental retardation. Results suggest that retarded students may not have appropriate memory strategies so that feedback does not result in strategy use. (SLD)

The disparity within studies concerning claims of false reporting is extreme: some studies have almost every family touched by child sexual abuse; others claim that as many as two-thirds of allegations are false. Into the middle is thrust the recovered memory controversy. Both sides allow political agendas to unduly influence their work, while…

Examined lexical influences on nonword repetition among 30 elementary school boys who were asked to repeat multisyllabic nonword pairs. Results found that nonwords with stressed syllables corresponding to real words were repeated significantly more accurately than nonwords with nonlexical stressed syllables. (23 references) (MDM)