Background: Episodic memory deficits are a characteristic of cognitive dysfunction in people with Down syndrome (DS). However, less is known about the processes (i.e. encoding, retention or using learned information flexibly) that underlie these deficits. Method: We explored these abilities by administering a relational memory and inference task…

One of the foundational principles of human memory is that repetition (i.e., being presented with a stimulus multiple times) improves recall. In the current study a group of participants who studied a list of cue-target pairs twice recalled fewer targets than a group who studied the pairs only once, a negative repetition effect. Such a…

Early verbal-memory researchers assumed participants represent memory of a pair of unrelated items with 2 independent, separately modifiable, directional associations. However, memory for pairs of unrelated words (A-B) exhibits associative symmetry: a near-perfect correlation between accuracy on forward (A??) and backward (??B) cued recall. This…

Paired associated learning (PAL) is a critical skill for making arbitrary associations among print, pronunciation and meaning in reading development. Extended from past research of PAL, this study investigated whether PAL operated flexibly to linguistic demands of languages, by examining word reading abilities in Chinese-English bilingual…

Involuntary episodic memories are memories of events that come to mind spontaneously, that is, with no preceding retrieval attempts. They are common in daily life and observed in a range of clinical disorders in the form of negative, intrusive recollections or flashbacks. However, little is known about their underlying mechanisms. Here we report a…

The present study compared the impact of different categories of graphics used within a complex learning task. One hundred eighty five native English speaking undergraduates participated in a task that required learning 18 Chinese radicals and their English equivalent translations. A post-test only control group design compared performance…

The prefrontal cortex (PFC) is known to contribute to memory processes such as encoding representations into long-term-memory (LTM) and retrieving these representations from LTM. However, the details of the PFC's contribution to LTM processes are not well known. To examine the characteristics of the PFC's contribution to LTM processes, we analyzed…

This study examines the concurrent relationships between phoneme awareness, visual-verbal paired-associate learning, rapid automatized naming (RAN), and reading skills in 7- to 11-year-old children. Path analyses showed that visual-verbal paired-associate learning and RAN, but not phoneme awareness, were unique predictors of word recognition,…

The purpose of this study was to gather evidence relative to the proposition that matching (recognition) performance for A-B pairs following an unlearning paradigm cannot be used to infer associative loss. The alternative was to assume that matching performance is based on frequency information which is independent of associative information. The…

The literature of antonymy, though disjointed and inconclusive, has found that opposition is important to development, learning, psychological health, and creativity. To investigate the role of dialectics in cognitive processes and human learning, four empirical studies were undertaken. In study one, to investigate the dialectic process in…

This summary of research performed during the past five and one-half years and dealing with different attributes in memory functioning is organized around four attributes of memory: "Frequency Attribute: Verbal Discrimination" explores the development of the theory dealing with verbal discrimination tasks and lists several papers prepared during…

Three experiments examined the role of contingent associations in learning double-function, verbal-discrimination lists. Some 15-pair lists were constructed of category instances in such a way that the learning of three contingent associations based on category names would mediate correct performance for all 15 pairs. The first experiment gave no…

Mild memory impairment was detected in 28% of a sample of healthy community-dwelling older adults using the delayed recall trial of a word list learning task. Statistical analysis revealed that individuals with memory impairment also demonstrated relative deficits on other measures of memory, and tests of executive function, processing speed and…

Five experiments were conducted to address the question of whether source information could be accessed in the absence of being able to recall an item. The authors used a paired-associate learning paradigm in which cue-target word pairs were studied, and target recall was requested in the presence of the cue. When target recall failed,…

The purposes of this study were to determine if test stimulus was a member of the memory set and if items in an interactive image held in short term memory (STM) could be scanned simultaneously. In experiment one, 50 university subjects compared a test word with a set of one to three words held in STM. The rate of STM search was obtained by…