The event specificity of autobiographical memories refers to the degree to which retold memories include specific details about a unique personal experience from a variety of representational systems supported by different brain areas. This article proposes 2 text measures as indicators of event specificity: (a) a measure of temporal sequence in…

Explored whether developmental changes in the structure and coherence of preschoolers' personal narratives might provide some clues about childhood amnesia. Suggests that while children's narratives become more elaborate, more detailed, and more complex over the preschool years, children's recall of the same events over time is remarkably stable,…

Describes a study of the recall of narrative prose. Serial structure at first influenced which elements were remembered, but as the Ss remembered more, the story grammar structure became the dominant influence over the elements remembered. (Author/RM)

Using a neo-Piagetian structural analysis, two studies examined developmental differences in the oral narratives of children aged four to ten years. The first experiment, reporting on 20 children at each of the dimensional substages (mean ages of 4.8, 6.1, 8.5, and 10.6 years), showed that a qualitative shift occurred between four and six years…

A Sample of 576 children participated in a study to determine the manner in which children retain narrative material, what information they retain, and the effects of sex and age upon these aspects of memory. The children, ranging in age from six to eight years, listened to a tape recorded story in individual sessions. Half of them were asked to…

This research examines the effects of structure and content variables on memory and comprehension of prose passages. A process model for the comprehension of stories is proposed which assumes that stories are encoded in a hierarchical organizational framework which represents the abstract structural relationships of the plot. The implications of…

Children with ADHD have difficulty understanding causal connections and goal plans within stories. This study examined mediators of group differences in story narrations between children ages 7-9 with and without ADHD, including as potential mediators both the core deficits of ADHD (i.e., inattention, disinhibition, planning/working memory) as…

This study examines recall of narrative prose for evidence of underlying structures such as the grammar used in the story's sentence structure. Subjects listened to repeated presentations of a tape recording of two pages from a history book, with verbals collected after each presentation. The subjects used in this experiment were 13 undergraduate…

Thematization, the relative frequency of a discourse referent, and topicalization are conceptualized as related discourse functions. In a probe recall experiment, a word with a thematized referent was a better recall probe than a word with a nonthematized referent. Also, an agent noun was a better prompt than a recipient, and this semantic…

Two experiments, involving 90 first-grade children, were conducted to test a retrieval-inefficiency explanation for the failure of visual imagery to facilitate young children's prose recall. (Author/MP)

Examines four groups of readers: second-language (L2) intermediate; L2 advanced; first-language (L1) Japanese; and L1 English) when they processed and recalled two passages varying in degree of causal coherence. Findings indicate that L1 readers used much of their attention for higher level processes, whereas L2 readers paid more attention to…