This study tested two cognitive models, learning styles and dual coding, which make contradictory predictions about how learners process and retain visual and auditory information. Learning styles-based instructional practices are common in educational environments despite a questionable research base, while the use of dual coding is less…

This research examined whether a memorable and unexpected change (deviation details) presented during 1 instance of a repeated event facilitated children's memory for that instance and whether a repeated event facilitated children's memory for deviation details. In Experiments 1 and 2, 8-year-olds (N = 167) watched 1 or 4 live magic shows.…

According to the constructive episodic simulation hypothesis (Schacter & Addis, 2007), both remembered past and imagined future events rely heavily on episodic memory. An alternative hypothesis is that observed similarities between remembering and imagining reflect the influence of broader factors such as descriptive ability, narrative style,…

The abilities of past and future episodic thinking develop hand in hand across the preschool years and are intimately connected in adults. Little is known, however, about the development of episodic thinking in middle childhood and how it is influenced by sociocultural factors. In the present study, one hundred sixty-seven 7- to 10-year-old…

In this study, we examined the effects of interference and repeated retention tests by comparing groups that performed (a) one or two tests, or (b) two tests separated by interpolated tasks. The task involved pressing five keys in 925 ms. Constant error increased after Block 1 of the second test for the group completing the interpolated tasks.…

The Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children--Fourth Edition (WISC-IV; D. Wechsler, 2003a) is often utilized to assess children with traumatic brain injury (TBI), although little information is available regarding its psychometric properties in these children. The current study examined WISC-IV performance in a sample of 61 children with TBI. As…

The aim of the present study was to examine executive dysfunctioning and decreased processing speed as potential mediators of age-related differences in episodic memory. We compared the performances of young and elderly adults in a free-recall task. Participants were also given tests to measure executive functions and perceptual processing speed…

Decoding, working memory, and domain-specific prior knowledge were studied as predictors of comprehension for 48 university undergraduate students after rewriting notes, rereading notes, or rereading a text. Working memory was most important for comprehension of text-implicit information, whereas knowledge was relatively more important for…