Focuses on five human information processing abilities which cognitive psychologists anticipate must be accounted for in order to develop good computer courseware--memory and attention; language or text characteristics; graphics and visual processing; cognitive characteristics of user; feedback to users. A 31-item bibliography is included. (EJS)

A novelty preference method was used to examine memory processes in retarded persons. Recognition memory as indexed by novel looking declined over the retention interval. Since memory is being inferred from response preferences which reflect an induced motivational state, satiation, the relationship between this state and memory must be…

Memory of incidentally learned material was investigated across three developmental levels in immediate and delay conditions. Incidental learning increased with age with or without specific instructions, suggesting that previously reported divergent developmental trends may not be the result of the type of paradigm. (Author.PN)

Examined adult age differences in use of context to study and retrieve information. Young and old adults were presented with a series of homographs (targets). Recognition memory for targets was tested. Recognition decreased in both groups as the retrieval context became more dissimilar to the study context. (Author/JAC)

Evaluated effects of perceived choice upon comprehension and memory of prose reading passages. Compared choice and no choice conditions with young and elderly adults and only elderly groups. Results indicated both age- and vocabulary-related deficits. However, perceived choice conditions did not produce any consistent improvement in performance.…

Experiments using memory paradigms have shown that general terms receive context-dependent encodings. This experiment investigates the encoding of category and instance nouns. The results indicate that representations set up during reading are the product of both the linguistic input and of general knowledge. (Author/KC)

Twenty normal children were administered three tests of auditory sequential memory. A Pearson product-moment correlation of .50 and coefficients of determination showed all but one relationship to be nonsignificant and predictability between pairs of scores to be poor. (Author)

Examined effect of emotion on recall of self-generated paired associates under conditions of immediate and delayed retention. Results showed that, with immediate retention, recall of associates to emotional stimuli was significantly lower than to neutral stimuli and, with delayed retention, associations to emotional stimuli were better recalled.…

Examined the possible facilitating effect of thematic materials in Wason's selection task. Two experiments failed to replicate previous findings. In support of a memory-cueing hypothesis, improved performance was found for an implication rule that was part of subjects' past experience. (Author)

Three experiments examined short-term encoding processes of deaf signers for different aspects of signs from American Sign Language. Results indicated that deaf signers code signs at one level in terms of linguistically significant formational parameters. The semantic and iconic information of signs, however, has little effect on short-term…

Tested hypotheses derived from Beck's cognitive theory of depression. Subjects rated performance before and after receiving feedback on a social interaction task. Results showed depressed males and females had more negative evaluation of present circumstances and poorer memory for feedback. Data were partially supportive of Beck's theory regarding…

Examined children's recall of the spatial configurations of an environment after the children followed prearranged paths and encountered barriers to movement. When asked to reconstruct the environmental configuration from memory, males estimated distances more accurately than did females. No age differences were noted. (Author/DB)

College students read prose passages and answered either verbatim or paraphrased inserted questions while reading under review or no review conditions. On a posttest students who received paraphrased questions outperformed students who received verbatim questions. This result supported the contention that paraphrased adjunct questions could…

Seven experiments investigated adults' knowledge of routine activities (e.g., eating in a restaurant) and how that knowledge is organized and used to understand and remember narrative texts. "Script" denotes these action stereotypes; the role of script knowledge in text memory is discussed, as is the relation of scripts to schema memory.…

This study examines interrelationships among several episodic memory tasks, particularly correlations among various attributes of memory: imagery, associative, acoustic, temporal, affective, and frequency. Undergraduates completed 28 episodic memory tests using tasks such as free recall, paired associates, classical recognition, and memory span.…