Mental state language during conversations about the past was assessed in a short-term longitudinal study. Twenty-one mother-child dyads discussed several previously experienced events when the children were 30 and 42 months old. Over time, children's mental term use--although quite low--did increase, and both mothers and children talked more…

Our research reflects the current trend to relate individual differences in second language learning to underlying cognitive processes e.g., Robinson, 2002. We believe that such investigations, apart from being of practical importance, can also shed light on the cognitive mechanisms underlying the language learning process. Here we focus on the…

Research suggests screen reading is slower and possibly less accurate than reading from paper. Six study and test sessions over 10 months examined correct scores and retrieval responses for learning material presented via these two media. Correct scores did not differ suggesting that close matching of material can eliminate any decrement in…

Though many cognitive abilities exhibit marked decline over the adult years, individual differences in rates of change have been observed. In the current study, biometrical latent growth models were used to examine sources of variability for ability level (intercept) and change (linear and quadratic effects) for verbal, fluid, memory, and…

This study adds to the growing literature linking children's experiences in the environment to individual differences in their developing skills in attention, memory, and planning. The authors asked about the extent to which stimulating and sensitive care in the family and in the child-care or school environments would predict these cognitive…

Colour is a common feature in computer-aided learning (CAL), though the instructional effects of screen colour are not well understood. This investigation considers the effects of different CAL study tasks with feedback on posttest performance and on posttest memory of the lesson colour scheme. Graduate students (n=68) completed a computer-based…

Verbal short-term memory, as measured by digit or word span, is generally impaired in individuals with Down's syndrome (DS) compared to mental age-matched controls. Moving from the working memory model, the present authors investigated the hypothesis that impairment in some of the articulatory loop sub-components is at the base of the deficient…

Individuals with Down's syndrome (DS) have an auditory short-term memory span disproportionately shorter than the non-verbal mental age (MA). This study evaluated the Baddeley model's claim that verbal short-term memory deficits might arise from slower speaking rates (and thus less material rehearsed in a 2 s passive store) by using the sentence…

An experiment was performed to investigate the effects of practice and spacing on retention of Japanese-English vocabulary paired associates. The relative benefit of spacing increased with increased practice and with longer retention intervals. Data were fitted with an activation-based memory model, which proposes that each time an item is…

Similarity underlies fundamental cognitive capabilities such as memory, categorization, decision making, problem solving, and reasoning. Although recent approaches to similarity appreciate the structure of mental representations, they differ in the processes posited to operate over these representations. We present an experiment that…

Time perception performance was systematically investigated in adolescents with and without attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Specifically, the effects of manipulating modality (auditory and visual) and length of duration (200 and 1000 ms) were examined. Forty-six adolescents with ADHD and 44 controls were administered four duration…

In this article the author shares his personal experiences beginning in early childhood with his own learning disabilities. As an adult with learning disabilities, he describes how he has learned to manage his language and memory barriers through assistive technology and outside support, and he nourishes himself through therapy or simply…

Children with Specific language Impairment (SLI) have problems with verbal memory, particularly with tasks that have more processing demands. They also have slower speeds of responding for some tasks. To identify the extent to which young children with SLI would differ in performance from age-matched non-impaired children on a set of spatio-visual…

Phonological awareness reflects the strength of a child's ability to represent linguistic information cognitively at the phonological level. Although the role of phonological awareness in early reading decoding has been well documented, its relationship to other factors affecting reading decoding has yet to be fully examined. In this study, the…

This study tested the hypothesis that children with high working memory capacities solve single-digit additions by direct retrieval of the answers from long-term memory more often than do children with low working memory capacities. Counting and reading letter span tasks were administered to groups of third-grade (mean age=107 months) and…