Observers often remember a scene as containing information that was not presented but that would have likely been located just beyond the observed boundaries of the scene. This effect is called "boundary extension" (BE; e.g., Intraub & Richardson, 1989). Previous studies have observed BE in memory for visual and haptic stimuli, and…

People's memories must be able to represent experiences with multiple types of origins--including the real world and our own imaginations, but also printed texts (prose-based media), movies, and television (screen-based media). This study was intended to identify cues that distinguish prose- and screen-based media memories from each other, as well…

Although research has shown that older adults are negatively affected by aging stereotypes, relatively few studies have attempted to identify those older adults who may be especially susceptible to these effects. The current research takes steps toward identifying older adults most susceptible to the effects of stereotype threat and investigates…

Recent theories have posited that the hippocampus and thalamus serve distinct, yet related, roles in episodic memory. Whereas the hippocampus has been implicated in long-term memory encoding and storage, the thalamus, as a whole, has been implicated in the selection of items for subsequent encoding and the use of retrieval strategies. However,…

Differences in discourse type were expected to result in differences in processing text. The more organized discourse types of comparison, problem/solution, and causation were predicted to yield superior recall of information than a collection of descriptions about a topic. Results from two studies supported this prediction. (Author/BW)

Retrieval and response criterion explanations of the effects of text organization on memory were tested in four experiments. More target information was freely recalled when it was high than when low in content structure. Retrieval cues reduced recall differences between information high and low in the structure. (Author/RD)

Examined effects of enforced organizational strategies on the memory of older adults for textual material. Young and old adults sorted scrambled sentences of a prose passage into the correct order. When older adults were required to make an in-depth analysis to sort material, their incidental memory for textual information was approximately equal…

Eighth-grade students were given short prose passages that described the distinguishing attributes of fictitious towns. Illustrations were devised to represent the attributes, either separately, thematically, or thematically in conjunction with the mnemonic keyword method. Keyword illustrations proved to be highly effective facilitators of…

This study examines the utility of an elaboration hypothesis as a means of predicting the recall of major ideas from text through the manipulation of paragraphs and via the use of inserted questions requiring different levels of elaboration. (PN)

This study sought to determine if age-related increases in memory for prose are, in part, due to deliberate mnemonic strategies and if older children use the high order relations in prose more efficiently than younger children. (HOD)

In this study on the interactive effects of advance organizers and reasoning skills, 112 undergraduates read a literature text preceded by either a comparative advance organizer or a placebo introduction. Results suggest that instructional organizers produce neither serious loss nor substantial benefits for many purposes of communication. (BS)

Forty children listened to stories and then answered questions about temporally neutral and temporally tagged information. Observed interactions among age, additional processing, and kind of information demonstrated the importance of the distinction between these types of information for developmental studies of memory of prose. (Author/DB)

The effects of subsequent related information and cognitive flexibility on prose recall were studied. Subjects read a passage; then were given either consistent or contradictory information. Errors in cued recall, reflecting the subsequent information, were more frequently produced after a three-week delay than after two days. (Author/GDC)

Two experiments were performed to determine whether questions inserted after prose passages initiate reviews which facilitate retention of the information in memory. Results suggest that the backward review is not attributed to a retrieval phenomenon but to a strengthening of memory traces at the time of the probe. (Author/GK)

In two experiments, the importance of mnemonic illustrations for improving the learning and memory performance of learning disabled adolescents was studied. Results showed that students learned more when they studied passages with mnemonic pictures and that mnemonic instruction facilitated students ability to make inferences about information…