Discusses important recent strides in the documentation and understanding of the infant's learning and memory capacity. Focuses on the psychobiology of learning, hedonic mediation of approach-avoidance and learned behavior, infant memory, and critical conditions of infancy and behavioral misadventures. (RJC)

Results showed that children in delayed recall remembered more about an episode if they had experienced additional similar episodes. With increasing experience, children tended to confuse details. Kindergarteners were better able to report a repeated event than a singular event in temporal sequence. (RH)

Two experiments involving students from grades 1-2 and 5-6 found strong connections between development and forgetting rates when the influences of learning ability were eliminated. Findings eliminated a hypothesis based on age variability in overlearning. (RH)

Cognitive triage is the nonmonotonic relationship between the order in which children read words out of long-term memory and the strength of the memory of the words read. Two experiments with 7 and 12 year olds compared the fuzzy-trace theory with an effortful processing explanation. Findings consistently favored the fuzzy-trace theory's…

Two experiments with second graders, sixth graders, college students, and mildly retarded persons showed that children and mildly retarded persons process spatial location information as well as do college students. Some, but not all, of the more severely retarded persons had deficits in processing memory for location. (Author/DB)

Examines whether the speed with which a word is recognized depends upon the frequency of related words, and which types of related words have such an influence. Finds support for the hypothesis that morphological relations between words, derivational as well as inflectional, are represented in the lexicon. (RS)

Attempts to unify two major approaches to the study of text comprehension into a process model of causal reasoning which explains how readers discover the causal structure of a complicated text. Presents empirical evidence to support the model. (RS)

The study found that using bizarre imagery was not as effective as a cued recall task in improving word recall of 14 college students with learning disabilities. Recall was also poorer during imagery than semantic processing instructions. Long-term memory for both learning disabled and non-disabled subjects was not aided by bizarre imagery.…

Examined convergent validities of the Metamemory in Adulthood questionnaire (MIA) and the Memory Functioning Questionnaire (MFQ). The Memory Self-Efficacy factor in the MIA and the Frequency of Forgetting factor in the MFQ correlate when the two scales are factored simultaneously. (RJC)

Studies the earliest childhood memories of 82 deaf and hearing college students. Results indicate no significant difference in the age of the earliest recollections among the students. The average age of the first memory was between 3 and 4 years. (RJC)

Discusses the current information processing conceptualization of memory, the process of learning by analogy, and the overall desired outcomes of their use to acquire and retain new information. Instructional implications of how to use analogies are discussed, and a set of prescriptive guidelines for using them is presented. (69 references)…

Comparison of 12 language disordered children (ages 7-13) with 12 normally achieving children on a short-term memory scanning task found the children with language disorders had substantially reduced processing speed as seen in longer memory retrieval time. The decreased memory scanning speed may contribute to linguistic deficits. (Author/DB)

The study investigated the development of memory strategy knowledge and spontaneous use of strategy by 6- to 12-year-old boys with attention deficit disorder and hyperactivity (ADD-H). Although there was no difference between experimental and control groups in metamemory knowledge, the ADD-H subjects were less likely to use memory strategies.…

Examined developmental change in category representation in the first year of life. Experiment 1 tested infants of three, five, and seven months in a visual recognition memory procedure. Results indicated change in the nature but not the structure of infant form categories. Experiment 2 ruled out a priori preferences as the basis for findings of…

Studies the allocation of attention of 100 four- and five-year-olds on a selective attention task. Results suggest that preschoolers are capable of using selective strategies when the task is made meaningful by the inclusion of a familiar script that provides supportive cognitive context. (RJC)