Studies in cognitive science have verified that working memory (where the brain solves problems) can manipulate nearly all elements of knowledge that can be recalled automatically from long-term memory, but only a few elements that have not previously been well memorized. Research in reading comprehension has found that "lecture notes with…

Students start to memorize arithmetic facts from early elementary school mathematics activities. Their fluency or lack of fluency with these facts could affect their efforts as they carry out mental calculations as adults. This study investigated participants' levels of brain activation and possible reasons for these levels as they solved…

Recent cognitive research has revealed better source memory performance for familiar relative to novel stimuli. Here we consider two possible explanations for this finding. The source memory advantage for familiar stimuli could arise because stimulus novelty induces attention to stimulus features at the expense of contextual processing, resulting…

The current review is concerned with an information processing model used in science education. The purpose is to summarise the current theoretical understanding, in published research, of a number of factors that are known to influence learning and achievement. These include field independence, working memory, long-term memory, and the use of…

In this article, the authors present their opposing views on whether students need to memorize facts in the digital age. One author contends that it is foolhardy to expect students to develop procedural knowledge (processes) without the underlying declarative knowledge (facts). The other says that analyzing always takes precedence over memorizing…

Long-term memory (LTM) is enhanced for emotional information, but the influence of stimulus emotionality on short-term memory (STM) is less clear. We examined the electrophysiological correlates of improved visual STM for emotional face identity, focusing on the P1, N170, P3b and N250r event-related potential (ERP) components. These correlates are…

We examined associative and item recognition using the maintenance rehearsal paradigm. Our intent was to control for mnemonic strategies; to produce a low, graded level of learning; and to provide evidence of the role of attention in long-term memory. An advantage for low-frequency words emerged in both associative and item recognition at very low…

A model of memory retrieval is described. The model embodies four main claims: (a) temporal memory--traces of items are represented in memory partly in terms of their temporal distance from the present; (b) scale-similarity--similar mechanisms govern retrieval from memory over many different timescales; (c) local distinctiveness--performance on a…

Twenty-four college seniors summarized a 167-word text. Five days later, they completed a sentence-recognition task and described components of successful text summarization. It appeared that students who summarized efficiently also stored information in memory efficiently. (Author/CJ)

Discusses laws and general characteristics of normal memory, specifying how exceptional memory feats deviate from and contradict them. Also discusses research in support of the assertion that normal memory structure is sufficient to explain exceptional memory feats, if differences in practice and prior experiences are taken into account.…

The present investigation examined implicit and explicit memory in 20 children diagnosed with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (AD/HD) and 20 matched controls. Consistent with previous research, children with AD/HD performed more poorly than controls on an explicit test of long-term memory for pictures. New results were that (a) there was…

Investigated suppression of activation and retrieval paths to information stored in long-term memory. Subjects were 94 children in grades 1, 3, and 5. Found that the ability to intentionally inhibit the maintenance and recall of irrelevant information improves over the elementary years, and children are less able than adults to withhold production…

Two experiments on children's inferences and associative memory provided a supportive test of fuzzy-trace theory. Results indicated that false recognition of associated instances with delay declined for all children, and categorical inferences increased for older children. Verbatim memory and inferences were uncorrelated under short delay but…

Discusses the value of memorized factual material in science. Describes the use of mnemonic devices to facilitate memorization. Provides a list of 14 mnemonic devices commonly used in science other than ROY G. BIV, which is used to remember the colors of the visible spectrum. (CW)

In college-level courses, the vast majority of students read expository textbooks with a primary purpose in mind: to memorize and, hopefully, understand enough information to receive a particular grade on a course exam. Intuitively, this kind of reading is different than the kind of reading that these same students do when reading a novel while…