The role of distinctiveness in the differential memory performance of visual and verbal elaboration strategies was studied with 28 undergraduates who learned information about familiar and unfamiliar animals using visual or verbal elaboration strategies. Imagery-using students organized unfamiliar animal information into intact sets more than…

Responds to a commentary regarding recovered memories of sexual abuse. Claims that the nature of recovered memory makes it extremely difficult to devise meaningful studies that address these concerns. Examines the client base, the personal history of child abuse, the professionalism of the therapist, and the content of client memories. (RJM)

Our memories are not necessarily "bad," but stored in different areas. By understanding the five memory lanes (semantic, episodic, procedural, automatic, and emotional), a high school English teacher discovered why her students could not do fractions (to calculate grades) in English class. Paper-and-pencil tests can be redesigned to assess memory…

The Memory Workout, a CD-ROM program designed to help older adults increase changes in physical and cognitive activity influencing memory, was tested with 24 subjects. Results revealed a significant relationship between exercise time, exercise efficacy, and cognitive function, as well as interest in improving memory and physical activity.…

Discusses two experiments: the first examining multilinguals ability to maintain native language writing quality and fluency in the presence of unattended irrelevant speech while maintaining a concurrent 6-digit memory load; the second in which bilinguals reduced fluency during writing with a six-digit load only. Results are interpreted in terms…

Describes memory task performance of a 50-year-old female with a phonological short-term memory (STM) impairment. The patient showed a deficit of syntactic parsing restricted to the auditory modality, possibility because of an impaired STM and an impaired syntactic parser. Test material and results are appended. (Contains 39 references.) (Author)

Reviews literature from neuroscience and mass communications regarding how media affects learning and memory and relates research findings to interactive multimedia. Topics discussed include knowledge and media; neurological conceptions of memory; media and memory; and interactive multimedia and memory. (Contains 24 references.) (LRW)

Examined effects of parent-child conversations on memory performance of preschoolers. Found significant relation between the amount of information about an independently experienced event discussed with parents and the amount discussed with the experimenter, but not a stable core of information. Results have implications for views of childhood…

Equations for prorating the Wechsler Memory Scale--Revised General Memory (GM) and Delayed Recall (DR) index scores were confirmed in a clinical sample of 258 patients. These prediction equations for the GM and DR summary scores have validity for patient samples similar to those of the present study. (SLD)

Maintains that recent elaborations of the Baddeley and Hitch working memory model offer a better account of processes underlying cognitive development than that by existing neo-Piagetian interpretations. Argues that the episodic buffer, newly added to the model, offers a way of dealing with more complex cognitive activities. Suggests that attempts…

Examined the effects of drawing true and false reminders about a previously experienced magic show on 3- to 6-year-olds' suggestibility and source monitoring ability. Found that children who had drawn the reminders had better recall of reminders and better source memory than children who had only answered questions about them. Both groups reported…

Concept maps are diagrams that show students how content is structured. This article asserts that they can be effective teaching and learning tools. It presents one method of concept mapping and several ways it can be used in the classroom. (EV)

Cognitive load (CL) theory suggests minimizing extraneous CL and maximizing germane CL in order not to overload working memory. Instructional design for older adults should therefore include goal-free problems, worked examples, and different modalities and avoid splitting attention and including redundant information. (SK)

Half of a group of 46 younger and 45 older adults watched a slide sequence once (one-trial learning), the other repeatedly (criterion learning). Three weeks later, they were asked questions with misleading information. When event memory was poor for older adults in the criterion group, they were more suggestible. In one-trial learning, younger…

This study confirmed the following: Fowler's (1989) finding that duration is reduced for repeated words that involve Given information; evidence that Given repetitions are restricted to intra-topic discourse; evidence that duration is increased for new repetitions under intra-topic conditions; and evidence for shortening and lengthening are…