Cognitive control of behavior continues to improve through adolescence in parallel with important brain maturational processes including synaptic pruning and myelination, which allow for efficient neuronal computations and the functional integration of widely distributed circuitries supporting top-down control of behavior. This is also a time when…

The cognitive underpinnings of arithmetic calculation in children are noted to involve working memory; however, cognitive processes related to arithmetic calculation and working memory suggest that this relationship is more complex than stated previously. The purpose of this investigation was to examine the relative contributions of processing…

Processing speed, inhibitory control and working memory have been identified as the main possible culprits of age-related cognitive decline. This article describes a study of their interrelationships and dependence on age, including exploration of whether any of them mediates between age and the others. We carried out a LISREL analysis of the…

Tested the hypothesis that fourth-graders have a greater tendency than first-graders to represent transformations as ordered series of beginning, middle, and end states. Predominantly constructed states of fourth-graders were components of continuous movements or transformations, whereas those of first-graders related to the experimenters' on the…

Examined developmental change in the duration of memory for tone pitch in children and adults. In experiment 1, performance on a two-tone comparison task deteriorated across the intertone interval more quickly in younger than in older subjects. Experiment 2 demonstrated that the developmental difference in pitch memory persistence is unlikely to…

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,…

This article presents a review of the "Process Assessment of the Learner-Second Edition" (PAL-II), an individual or group-administered instrument designed to assess the cognitive processes involved in academic tasks in kindergarten through sixth grade. The instrument allows the examiner to identify reasons for underachievement and…

Emerging research supports the contribution of executive function (EF) to reading comprehension; however, a unique pattern has not been established for children who demonstrate comprehension difficulties despite average word recognition ability (specific reading comprehension deficit; S-RCD). To identify particular EF components on which children…

In this study, the author aimed at measuring how much limited working memory capacity constrains early numerical development before any formal mathematics instruction. To that end, 4- and 5-year-old children were tested for their memory skills in the phonological loop (PL), visuo-spatial sketchpad (VSSP), and central executive (CE); they also…

This study examined the correlates of new word learning in a sample of 64 typically developing children between 5 and 8 years of age and a group of 22 teenagers and young adults with Down syndrome. Verbal short-term memory and phonological awareness skills were assessed to determine whether learning new words involved accurately representing…

Little is known about the initial stages of information processing in amnesia as compared to normal memory. In this study, we used electrical spatiotemporal mapping to compare cortical activation during encoding and recognition in a 56-year-old patient with severe, chronic post-anoxic amnesia and an age-matched control group. Event-related…

A critical issue for Ericsson et al.'s proposal is the development of a fully adequate description of neurophysiological substrates for deliberate practice. Ericsson et al. do provide two substantial subsections on biological substrates--namely, their subsections, "Acquisition of superior power, control, and speed of motor activities" and…

People can intentionally forget previously studied material if, after study, a forget cue is provided and new material is learned. It has recently been suggested that such list-method directed forgetting arises because the forget cue induces a change in internal context and causes context-dependent forgetting of the studied material (L. Sahakyan &…

Ratings of the degree of association between words are linearly related to normed associative strengths, but the intercept is high, and the slope is shallow (the judgments of associative memory [JAM] function). Two experiments included manipulations intended to decrease the intercept and increase the slope. Discrimination training on many pairs…

Many models of learning rely on accessing internal knowledge states. Yet, although infants and young children are recognized to be proficient learners, the ability to act on metacognitive information is not thought to develop until early school years. In the experiments reported here, 3.5-year-olds demonstrated memory-monitoring skills by…