It was hypothesized that the concept of cognitive effort in memory is both useful and important. Cognitive effort was defined as the engaged proportion of limited- capacity central processing. Four experiments were conducted, and the implications and potential applications of the concept were discussed. (Author/MH)

In secondary-task reading experiments, easy text filled cognitive capacity more completely than difficult text. A cognitive interpretation is that, in reading easy passages, the cognitive processors are full. But in difficult passages, frequent breakdowns in comprehension temporarily empty processor spaces, leaving cognitive capacity for the…

Subjects learned one, two, or three verbal lists simultaneously. Recall of the common list after 24 hours increased directly as the number of lists learned simultaneously increased. Assuming that simultaneous learning reduced interference, the interference was from extraexperimental sources of a proactive nature. (Author/CP)

The fan effect (the difficulty in retrieving any one fact after learning many about a concept) occurs only when the facts with repeated concepts are stored as independent episodes. It tells us nothing about the code formed by a pattern of interconnected concepts. (Author/CP)