Presents several reconceptualizations of adult cognitive development and its relation to everyday problem solving. Argues that investigation of relations between adult cognitive development and everyday problem solving may be facilitated through causal modeling that includes task characteristics, social context, and personality and motivational…

Maintains that Teyler and Fountain's presentation (1987) contains several limitations, namely, that the authors do not (1) distinguish between learning and memory, nor between storage and retrieval; (2) address the role of knowledge-based influences in memory and learning; or (3) employ concepts that can accommodate developmental phenomena in the…

Challenges the notion that long-term memory retrieval efficiency is a potential source of individual and developmental differences in cognitive functioning. Fourth-grade, eighth-grade, and college-aged subjects participated in a task using the Posner letter matching paradigm and were assessed with tests of verbal and spatial ability. (Author/CB)

Results indicate specific and positive effects of Quranic schooling on serial memory but not on other memory or cognitive tasks. These findings replicate earlier reports that Quranic schooling affects specific (and not general) memory skills. (PCB)

Five experiments investigated whether the cued recall of children and adults differed for classified events featuring different category and relation types. Recall for events differed strongly for children and adults. Differences were attributed to properties of the internal structure of event representation in memory. (SKC)

Examined whether representational changes in digit memory are functions of children's expertise in mental abacus operation when abacus operators reproduced series of digits forward or backward. Found skilled operators equally facile with forward and backward reproduction, but novices slower going backward. Suggests advanced operators apply their…

The ability of 20 learning disabled (LD) and 20 non-LD students (mean age of 9 years) to process temporal order information was assessed by employing a relative recency judgment task. Ss were administered lists composed of pictures of everyday objects and were then asked to indicate which item appeared latest on the list (that is, most recently).…

Investigated the role of memory development, especially the developmental change in reported general and specific memories, in children's and adults' concepts of themselves. The proportion of general responses was found to be high and stable across all ages; the proportion of specific responses increased with age. (PCB)

Effects of the importance of plot-relevant information on 4- to 6-year-old children's memory for four televised stories was examined in two experiments. Free recall and cued recall of idea units rated for importance by college students were assessed. Recognition following failed cued recall was also assessed. (Author/BN)

This study examined the relationship between cognitive style and information processing in preschoolers, and described developmental changes in their performance on a central-incidental learning task. Sixty preschoolers, in two age groups (mean ages of 4-1 and 4-11), were administered tests of reflection-impulsivity, field dependence-independence,…

Reports two experiments in which eight patients with organic memory disorders exhibited a pattern of search behavior that resembled mnemonmic precedence--the ability to retrieve an object at an initial location, but not at a new location. (HOD)

Three experiments demonstrate that children four to ten years old, when presented with a series recall task with pictures of common objects having short or long names, showed consistently better recall of pictures with short names. (HOD)

Describes four experiments that examined the ability of second- and fifth-grade children and college adults to use "extra-list" cues to retrieve episodic information from memory. Shows that effective cue use varied with both the "match" of cue and event classification, and with the associative structure of permanent memory.…

Described in the context of a computer simulation are highlights of a program of research focusing on the storage of mathematics problem solving information in young children's memory and the development of such knowledge structures in older children. Specifically discussed are the problem size effect, the network nature of the memory…

The way cognitive, event-related brain potentials (ERPs) can aid in further understanding of memory span change in children is discussed. ERPs are time-dependent changes in electrical activity of the brain (as recorded by scalp electrodes) following the presentation of a physical stimulus through auditory, visual, or somatosensory modalities. The…