Analyzed the performance of Alzheimer's patients (N=141) on the Mini-Mental State Examination. Performance on all items showed significant negative correlation with the duration of the illness. The most difficult item was "recall," and the improvement in recall was obtained with cuing. (Author/ABB)

Aphasic (N=15) and non-brain-damaged adults listened to and retold two narrative stories three times in succession. Both aphasic and non-brain-damaged subjects were affected by story structure and increased the amount of information retold across retellings. Non-brain-damaged subjects retold slightly more (statistically insignificant) information…

The use of a rehearsal strategy by 10-, 12-, and 14-year-old mildly mentally retarded children and adolescents (N=39) was investigated using a self-paced recall readiness task. The task allowed Ss to study items in any order as many times as desired. Each group used rehearsal, as indicated by increasing study time patterns and the number of…

The ANDS (A Natural Deduction System) model, described in this article, is a psychological theory of propositional reasoning that makes explicit assumptions about memory and control in deduction. A computer simulation of the ANDS model yields proofs similar to those of untrained subjects. (Author/BW)

A total of 60 children four-, five-, and six-years-old were assigned to memory or control groups and told they could play with toys. Mnemonic mediators were identified on the basis of differences in the behavior of children given memory and play instructions. Use of mnemonic mediators differentiated groups at all ages and increased with age. (RH)

Presents several reconceptualizations of adult cognitive development and its relation to everyday problem solving. Argues that investigation of relations between adult cognitive development and everyday problem solving may be facilitated through causal modeling that includes task characteristics, social context, and personality and motivational…

Examines hypothesis that lack of structural constraint limits children's ability to use context and category cues to search associative memory for episodic information. Second- and fifth-graders and college adults were shown word triplets and asked to recall the final target member of each triplet in a cued recall task. (Author/BE)

Reports on four experiments on how differences in utterance relations influence understanding anaphors, that is, devices that refer back to previously mentioned words or concepts in a discourse. Findings suggest that readers may selectively keep information available if it is likely to be needed for interpreting subsequent input. (SED)

The study used the semantic strategy of stories linking to-be-remembered items and a serial-recall requirement with 27 educable mentally retarded adolescents. In comparison to control subjects, Ss recalled more in the early trials of original learning, but retention after eight months was comparable for the two conditions. (Author/DB)

Free recall performance of children in grades three, five, seven, and nine and of adults was assessed according to a list of categorically related words. Results indicated that seventh and ninth graders were more apt to use associative relations to begin category clusters than were younger children or adults. (Author/BE)

Short-term memory data showed that differences between groups were confined mainly to recall of recency items; within the three older groups, superior readers were superior to competent readers, who in turn were superior to disabled readers; younger competent readers were superior to older disabled readers, despite similarity in reading test…

Two-digit span tasks compared the distraction performance of 32 learning disabled (LD) high schoolers and non LD Ss. No differential distraction effect was found on the first set (matching nondistraction and distraction conditions). In set two, (distraction condition was designed to be more discriminating), a differential distraction effect was…

A total of 60 first- and third-grade children were divided into three treatment groups receiving task-specific strategy instructions and/or metacognitive training. Results were discussed in terms of the interactive nature of knowledge, process, and motivational variables as determinants of strategy transfer. (Author/CI)

Presents a hypothesis about the biochemical processes involved in memory storage. The postulated mechanism is initiated by a signal that is unusual but not unlikely to occur and produces an irreversible change in a key component of synaptic chemistry. Other features of the mechanism and experiments supporting the hypothesis are considered. (JN)

A study involving dyslexic children (10-14 years old) with average and high reasoning ability and nondyslexic children with and without superior mathematical ability suggested that the high reasoning dyslexic Ss had similar abstract reasoning ability but lower computation and memory skills than mathematically gifted nondyslexic Ss. (CL)