Background: Tasks that involve retrieving information from memory, such as answering short answer questions, are more effective at improving learning than restudying, concept mapping, and other study techniques. However, little is known about how often teachers naturally provide these retrieval practice opportunities during lectures and classroom…

Autistic people experience social communication difficulties alongside specific memory difficulties than impact their ability to recall episodic events. Police interviewing techniques do not take account of these differences, and so are often ineffective. Here we introduce a novel Witness-Aimed First Account interview technique, designed to better…

Globally, children with intellectual disabilities are at an increased risk of being victims of maltreatment compared to those without disabilities. Among the children who do disclose the abuse, limitations with communication and working memory can result in their allegation being perceived as not credible. There are several evidence-based…

We investigated 7- to 10-year-old children's productive extension of semantic memory through self-generation of new factual knowledge derived through integration of separate yet related facts learned through instruction or through reading. In Experiment 1, an experimenter read the to-be-integrated facts. Children successfully learned and…

Presenting inconsistent postevent information about a witnessed incident typically decreases the accuracy of memory reports concerning that event (the "misinformation effect"). Surprisingly, the "reversibility" of the effect (after an initial occurrence) has remained largely unexplored. Based on a "memory conversion" theoretical framework and…

Adults ask children questions in a variety of contexts, for example, in the classroom, in the forensic context, or in experimental research. In such situations children will inevitably be asked some questions to which they do not know the answer, because they do not have the required information ("unanswerable" questions). When asked unanswerable…

Two experiments were conducted to determine whether explicit instruction focusing on metaphorical collocations would promote the incidental noticing of similar phrases by English learners during a subsequent reading task. Noticing was operationalized using the remember-know protocol and learning was measured on a fill-in-the-blanks test. In…

Students (N = 101) used an introductory text and a computer simulation to learn fundamental concepts about statistical analyses (e.g., analysis of variance, regression analysis and General Linear Model). Each learner was randomly assigned to one cell of a 2 (with or without time advice) x 3 (with learning questions and corrective feedback, with…

Thirty fourth-grade children were exposed in pairs to a series of slides and invited to take turns asking questions. Results showed retention to be significantly better for information acquired through the child's own questions as opposed to the information acquired through the partner's questions. (Author/JMB)

This study compares the effects of specific questioning strategies on children's recall of stories. (SB)

Two experiments were conducted to test three hypotheses related to comprehension. The hypotheses were: that actions are harder to modify than states; that implications or inferences from modified concepts would also change in memory; and that propagation of modifications would be less likely to states than to actions. The first experiment tested…

Explored preschoolers' eyewitness testimony under conditions designed to maximize or degrade the quality of their event reports. Found that 3- to 4-year olds were highly accurate when questioned nonsuggestively about an engaging experience after a short delay, and could provide substantial information when prompted. However, they made many…

An experiment contrasted the predictions of two explanations of the cognitive review process of the post-passage adjunct question paradigm. The questions presented to 104 college students quizzed either information high in the organizational structure of the expository prose passage or information low in the structure. The top-down-search…

Compared toys and real items as props for facilitating children's reporting of an event. Indicates that the effects of props depend on the nature of the items and the age of the children with whom they are used. Suggests that real items may provide one means of supporting recall, to enable children to provide their most complete and accurate…

The hypothesis that being questioned about a narrow topic while reading enhances the recall of other material closely related is supported. The relationship between the performances facilitating adjunct questions requires further explanation. (Author/BJG)