Effects of mobilizing prior knowledge on information processing were studied with 3 groups of 12 adult subjects each. The assumption that activating different kinds of prior knowledge would induce different information processing activities during subsequent text processing (inferencing or elaborating) was tested using passages about fishing…

Noting that current cognitive theories focus on the belief that knowledge is an organized collection of long-term structures upon which various processing mechanisms operate, this paper argues that mental functioning may be more readily characterized if the idea of abstract long-term associations and structures is abandoned. It proposes a model of…

This study indicated that the school performance and intelligence quotients of associative responders diverge significantly over time from those of nonassociative responders. This divergence becomes greater with age, suggesting that reliance on associative responding in preference to reasoning may cumulatively interfere with intellectual…

Age-related changes in memory processes in children and adults were studied using a free recall monaural task which included manipulation of association value of words and presentation rate variables. (GO)

Discusses two experiments in which middle-aged, elderly, professional, and non-professional males and females were given the Conceptual Styles Test. An analysis of variance on the percentage of complementary responses revealed significant effects for age, occupation, and th interaction between age and sex. (ED)

Ten boys and 10 girls ages 29-35 months, were tested individually on a memory task requiring free recall of two-item lists. No sex differences in response were noted. The mean number of correct responses and the mean number of correct pairs were higher for related items, and, in addition, the children frequently reported the last object they saw…

Study partially supported by the University of Wisconsin Graduate School Research Committee, project 66-67600.

Three clearly distinguishable lists were given simultaneously for learning. In one condition, subjects recalled all three lists; in a second condition, each list was given a different type of retention test although one of the lists was recalled. All subjects were fully informed of the materials and tests. The critical interest was in the recall…

Four experiments were conducted to examine the effects of various processing instructions on the rate of false recognition. The continuous single-item procedure was used, and false recognitions of four types were examined: synonyms, antonyms, nonsemantic associates, and homonyms. The instructions encouraged subjects to think of associates, usages…

The relationship between visual recognition memory and performance on a paired-associate task for good and poor readers was investigated. Subjects were three groups of 21, 21, and 22 children each, with mean IQ's of 98.2, 108.1, and 118.0, respectively. Three experimental tasks, individually administered to each subject, measured visual…

This study tested whether the word association employed by individual students could be used to predict their performance in a particular course. It was designed to explore a new method for describing the various models used in thinking and to determine whether this approach would yield results that were consonant with current cognitive theory. At…

A study of the commonality of associations of 50 lexical and 50 structural words by 80 kindergarten children indicated that (1) there was no significant difference in commonality of responses between lexical and structural words, (2) there was a difference in commonality relations for the sexes, and (3) there was more commonality in responses to…

In order to calibrate a vocabulary base which might be utilized in preparing materials for reading instruction at the elementary level, the 1000 most frequently used words in the preschooler's vocabulary provided the experimental data for several studies: (1) a series of free-recall experiments which yielded a scaling of common words according to…

THE EFFECTS OF SELECTIVE MANIPULATION OF PICTORIAL CONTENT UPON PAIRED ASSOCIATE LEARNING WERE TESTED AND EVALUATED. STIMULUS MATERIAL WAS VARIED BY AUGMENTING CONTOUR CUES AND DIMINISHING IRRELEVANT CUES. FIFTH-GRADE STUDENTS WERE ASSIGNED TO NINE DIFFERENT TREATMENTS, INVOLVING STIMULUS SLIDES THAT VARIED IN TREATMENT OF CONTOUR AND CONTEXTUAL…

Attempts to identify specific components of a complex associative task, foreign language vocabulary learning, that might be particularly sensitive to developmental differences in imagery generation ability. Subjects were 95 second grade children enrolled in four schools and 90 sixth grade children enrolled in two of these same schools. (Author/MP)