The study attempted to determine whether the failure of Down Syndrome (DS) individuals to show the modality effect (the tendency to show better short-term memory for brief sequences of auditory rather than visual information) is due to the verbal-expressive demands of oral responding in memory tasks. DS, nonretarded (NR) and MR (non-DS mentally…

This paper summarizes two studies which examine children's free recall of letter sequences in an auditory presentation. In both studies, sequences of six or eight letters were presented to 80 third-grade and 80 eighth-grade pupils, at the rate of one item every other second or four items per second. In the first study, where recall was either…

In order to determine whether there are developmental differences in the handling of the modality attribute 32 children from each of grades two and six and 32 college students were presented with a video-taped mixed-modality list of 32 first grade words. Subjects were asked to recall the words, to identify the presentation modality of each word on…

The impact of age effects on nonverbal memory for auditory or tactual patterns has been largely neglected in research studies. The effects of age on nonverbal memory were investigated by comparing subjects (N=120), divided by age decades into six groups (N=20), through tests using visual, auditory, and tactual items which were resistant to verbal…

This study examined the role of visual and auditory presentation in memory encoding processes of 80 second-grade children, using the release-from-proactive-interference short-term memory (STM) paradigm. Words were presented over three trials within one of the presentation modes and one taxonomic category, followed by a fourth trial in which the…

The proposals concerning working memory outlined in this paper involve the architecture of working memory, the reasoning mechanisms that draw on it, and the ways in which working memory may develop with age. Ways of assessing task demands and children's working memory capacities are also considered. It is noted that there is long-standing evidence…

Because human memory and thought involve extremely complex processes, it is possible to employ unusual modalities and specific visual strategies for remembering and problem-solving to assist patients with memory defects. This three-part paper discusses some of the research in the field of human memory and describes practical applications of these…

The effect of three levels of short-term memory (STM) and four learning modes (control, chunking organizational strategy, programmed instruction, and adjunct questions) on prose learning and recall was studied. The participants in this study were educational psychology students at Towson State College in Maryland. Significant STM and learning mode…

A study examined the nature of the schematic processes for a story presented in television, text, and radio form and for a story presented to above average and average readers. The story was parsed according to J. M. Mandler and N. S. Johnson's story grammar. Schematic processing was inferred from the pattern of node memorability for the different…

The purpose of this study was to determine whether children as young as second-graders could encode categorically within an abstract evaluative dimension. The study uses mode of stimulus presentation (auditory or visual) as an independent variable. The subjects were 40 white middle class children from grades 2, 4, and 6, who were randomly assigned…

To assess the importance of visual attributes relative to acoustic and semantic attributes in children's encoding, a 64-item recognition test was administered to first- and sixth-grade children. Recognition items were linedrawings of simple objects accompanied by aural labels. By manipulating the picture, label, and referent in various…

A study was made to determine whether different methods of visual presentations would affect the retention rate of individuals with two distinct types of perception--visual and haptic. The visual type, according to a study by Viktor Lowenfeld in 1957, is marked by the following characteristics: (1) ability to see wholes, break them into visual…