Research has suggested that behavioral differences may account for the effects of caffeine on information processing. To investigate the effects of caffeine on memory for supraspan word lists, 107 college students (47 males, 60 females), divided into 12 groups by high and low impulsivity scores on the Eysenck Personality Inventory, participated in…

A study investigated processing differences between metaphorical and literal versions of the same sentences. The purposes of the study were (1) to directly compare the on-line processing demands of metaphoric and nonmetaphoric sentences, and (2) to examine the consequences of such sentences for memory performance. The subjects were 39 college…

The phenomenon of more interference with reading than with listening was replicated using speech-related and nonspeech-related distractor tasks. It is argued that the selective interference effect is due to the relative difficulty of reading over listening rather than to the importance of speech recoding in reading. (Author/RD)

The hypothesis that gains in reading performance occurring among dyslexic children during individually paced reading are partially attributable to changes in short-term memory processing was tested with 23 elementary school students. Findings provide support for a causal role for short-term memory functioning in text processing. (SLD)

Identifies and summarizes important research in modern cognitive psychology that has implications for the design of computer drill and practice programs in education. Highlights include automaticity of subskills; interference present in a learning task; spacing of practice sessions; spaced review; capacity of short-term memory; and representation…

Preschool children were given a memory task that required repeating a list of animal names and a sentence imitation task. Results confirmed a relationship between word span and language imitation in younger preschool children and the notion of a memory constraint on early spontaneous language. Increasing mastery of linguistic rules appeared to…

Examined relationships among working memory, memory span, and reading skills in children and adults. Found that working memory and short-term memory skills develop through adolescence, but working memory skills show declines in adulthood. Age-related declines in memory appear to be related to the task's processing demands, which may affect the…

The performance of 17 youth on a verbatim recall task indicated that skilled deaf readers are more able than average deaf readers to sustain a record of English function words and inflections. The relative speed of skilled readers when making lexical decisions about phonologically similar word pairs indicated greater access to phonological…

Used a variance-partitioning procedure to identify age-related and age-invariant components of verbal and spatial memory span in 6- to 12-year olds. Concluded that verbal and spatial short-term memory appear to rely on similar processes when serial recall is required and that development in span is closely tied to increases in processing speed.…

This study explored the structure of verbal and visuospatial short-term and working memory in children between ages 4 and 11 years. Multiple tasks measuring 4 different memory components were used to capture the cognitive processes underlying working memory. Confirmatory factor analyses indicated that the processing component of working memory…

Performance on a wide variety of memory tasks can be hypothesized to be influenced by processes associated with controlling the contents of memory. In this project 328 adults ranging from 18 to 93 years of age performed six tasks (e.g., multiple trial recall with an interpolated interference list, directed forgetting, proactive interference, and…

Background: Tourette's syndrome (TS) is a neurodevelopmental disorder associated with fronto-striatal dysfunction. There is debate as to the extent to which TS is associated with cognitive impairment. Some authors argue that any impairments seen are attributable to comorbid psychiatric symptomatology, whilst others have suggested that…

Damage to the medial region of the thalamus, both in clinical cases (e.g., patients with infarcts or the Korsakoff's syndrome) and animal lesion models, is associated with variable amnesic deficits. Some studies suggest that many of these memory deficits rely on the presence of lateral thalamic lesions (LT) that include the intralaminar nuclei,…

The Kuhn and Pease (p. 279, this issue) article advances the fields of cognitive development and learning by integrating work on executive functions, metacognition, and scientific reasoning. The article also expands developmental work to older children and adults, to personal beliefs, and to social information, and reinvigorates the construct of…

This paper discusses a mental model of learning based on the processes of attention, perception, processing, and application. The learning process starts with attention, such as curiosity, excitement, expectation, or fear; in pedagogy this is called motivation. New impressions are dependent on and interpreted against the background of previous…