The nature of memory processes has been inferred from (1) direct comparisons of recognition and cued recall performance, (2) indirect comparisons using different types of target stimuli, and (3) studies of recognition varying target material. Investigators have overlooked the possibility that recognition performance can be manipulated by changing…

Reviews three response rate measures (in a baseline measurement, immediately after acquisition, and at a long-term retention test) of infant memory that are used in experiments involving infants' conditioned kicking. Compares these measures to a new measure, the fraction of kicking rate remaining after the retention interval. Explains the…

Compared the power of two memory tasks to predict performance of 7- and 8-year-olds' on 2 phonological awareness measures. Found that the sound categorization had higher working memory demands than the phoneme deletion task. Working memory predicted independent variance only for sound categorization. Short-term memory did not account for…

Presents new measure of children's use of an editing operation that suppresses false memories by accessing verbatim traces of true events. Application of the methodology showed that false-memory editing increased dramatically between early and middle childhood. Measure reacted appropriately to experimental manipulations. Developmental reductions…

Results of a study indicated that adults reading for retention spent more time focusing on syntactic structure, while those reading for immediate comprehension focused more of their time on semantic content. However, the children (fifth graders) used reading strategies that involved mixtures of both of the adult components. (SL)

This paper reports three experiments concerning methodological issues in studies on incidental learning performance which use verbal and nonverbal procedures and which appear to be hampered by differences in stimulus materials, learning opportunities, and dependent measures. The first study, using 128 children from grades 3, 5, 7, and 9, attempted…

Types of comparisons for evaluation of mnemonics were identified based on equating exposure to the to-be-learned associations or on total study time. Experiments on the cueword method illustrated how highly analytical experiments on mnemonics might be conducted and how choice of comparisons in research could affect mnemonic evaluation. (Author/DWH)

Results of five experiments in which adults and children were exposed to two study strategies for vocabulary learning: (1) repetition of words with meanings and (2) associative elaboration (the keyword method). Subjects were asked to choose one of the two study methods for learning a 24-item list of new vocabulary words. (SL)

Four experiments examined whether reinstatement and reactivation reminder paradigms affected memory performance of 102 three-month-olds. Results indicated that a single reinstatement protracted retention twice as long after training as a single reactivation. The novelty of the reminder stimulus also affected duration and specificity of memory in…

In this study four research strategies used in previous studies of the socialization of cognitive skills were first contrasted and then assessed in terms of five criteria. (The data base for this study was 32 videotapes of mothers preparing their 7- or 9-year-old children to take a memory test.) The four strategies (frequency coding, fine-grained…

The legitimacy of using the criterion of low reading achievement in the study of learning and memory skills with learning disabled children was assessed, based on a comparison of 35 nondisabled students, 15 low readers, and 10 learning disabled high school students. Learning disabilities were defined as encompassing perceptual and/or processing…

"Wahkohtowin," a Cree word meaning kinship or the state of being related, is a fundamental concept for understanding Indigenous culture and traditional beliefs (Ermine 2001). This article describes how three researchers in western Canada incorporated this concept into a research project that compared Indigenous and non-Indigenous…

Describes technique developed by the Barking Reading Project to judge relevance of visual sequential memory to reading. A study which used this technique to assess the effects of labelling strategy on sequential memory tasks is compared with alternative assessments, and results are discussed in terms of task analysis and structuralist approaches.…