The purpose of this study was to examine clusters of less-skilled college readers. College students with below average reading comprehension skills (N = 77) read and thought aloud about four texts, recalled the texts, and completed standardized assessments of reading skills. Based on the findings of cluster analyses of the cognitive processes…

The purpose of this study was to examine clusters of less-skilled college readers. College students with below average reading comprehension skills (N = 77) read and thought aloud about four texts, recalled the texts, and completed standardized assessments of reading skills. Based on the findings of cluster analyses of the cognitive processes…

We used the timing of serial recall in several situations to reveal important aspects of recall groupings that participants construct and the reasons those groupings occur. We examined the timing of responses in the recall of digit strings within two published experiments. Cowan, Saults, Elliott, and Moreno (2002) examined memory for nine-item…

Recent studies of semantic memory have investigated two theories of optimal search adopted from the animal foraging literature: Lévy flights and marginal value theorem. Each theory makes different simplifying assumptions and addresses different findings in search behaviors. In this study, an experiment is conducted to test whether clustering in…

The universality of reading comprehension strategies across languages is a view generally accepted. What has not been clearly established, however, is the degree to which specific comprehension strategies are used by skilled L1 and L2 readers in the early grades. To investigate this issue, similarities and differences in the reading strategies of…

Results indicated that Ss demonstrating a high degree of clustering recalled more than Ss demonstrating a low degree of clustering. (Authors)

In this study assumptions are made concerning the amount of clustering in sequences containing runs of equivalent elements. It is assumed that any valid clustering measure is linear with respect to union of runs and monotone increasing under iterations of clustering operators. With these two assumptions it follows that any such measure is of…

Frender and Doubilet suggest that Bousfield's ratio of repetitions (RR) is the best measure of clustering in free recall presently available. Conditioning only on the number of words recalled, they determine the mean of RR in the absence of clustering. In this note the null variance of RR is presented. (Author)

In free recall learning, taxonomic organization has been studied almost to the exclusion of alternative types of organization. Consequently, little is known about how learning and memory are affected by alternative types of organizations. The present experiments explored the differential effects of two kinds of organization on free recall…

The effects of category size and instruction to cluster on the free-recall learning of 112 nonretarded (mean age 7 years) and retarded children (mean age 10 years) were assessed. (Author)

Reports an experiment in which a topical system facilitated subjects' recall of information pertinent both to highly meaningful and less meaningful issues; based upon author's doctoral study, Pennsylvania State University. (RD)