Is phonological learning subject to the same inductive biases as learning in other domains? Previous studies of non-linguistic learning found that intra-dimensional dependencies (between two instances of the same feature) were learned more easily than inter-dimensional ones. This study compares implicit learning of intra- and inter-dimensional…

Construction of imaginative or fictitious events requires the flexible recombination of stored information into novel representations. How this process is accomplished is not understood fully. To address this problem, older adults (mean age = 74.2; Experiment 1) and younger patients with MTL lesions (mean age = 54.2; Experiment 2), both of whom…

The role of interference as a primary determinant of forgetting in memory has long been accepted, however its role as a contributor to poor comprehension is just beginning to be understood. The current paper reports two studies, in which speed-accuracy tradeoff and eye-tracking methodologies were used with the same materials to provide converging…

The relation between intrusions in several different recall tasks was examined in the current study. Intrusions from these tasks were moderately correlated and formed a unitary intrusion factor. This factor was related to other cognitive ability measures including working memory capacity, judgments of recency, and general source-monitoring…

We evaluated STREAK and the univariate signal detection model of Remember/Know (RK) judgments in terms of their ability to fit empirical data and produce psychologically meaningful parameter estimates. Participants studied pairs of words and completed item recognition tests with RK judgments as well as associative recognition tests. Fits to the RK…

Word properties like imageability and word frequency improve cued recall of verbal paired-associates. We asked whether these enhancements follow simply from prior effects on item-memory, or also strengthen associations between items. Participants studied word pairs varying in imageability or frequency: pairs were "pure" (high-high, low-low) or…

The current study examined the extent to which attention control abilities, secondary memory abilities, or both accounted for variation in working memory capacity (WMC) and its relation to fluid intelligence. Participants performed various attention control, secondary memory, WMC, and fluid intelligence measures. Confirmatory factor analyses…

The "spacing effect" is the commonly observed phenomenon that memory for spaced repetitions is better than memory for massed repetitions. To further investigate the role of rehearsal in spacing effects, three experiments were conducted. With pure lists we found spacing effects in free recall when spacing intervals were relatively long (Experiments…

The relationship between nonword repetition ability and vocabulary size and vocabulary learning has been a topic of intense research interest and investigation over the last two decades, following the demonstration that nonword repetition accuracy is predictive of vocabulary size (Gathercole & Baddeley, 1989). However, the nature of this…

Preschool-age children were hypothesized to use one of two criteria, cue recognition or target generation, to make several linguistic judgments. When deciding whether a word is one they know, for example, some were expected to consider whether they recognized its sound form (cue recognition), whereas others were expected to consider whether a…

A single-system model of repetition priming and recognition memory is presented, which is conceptually similar to signal-detection theory. Key assumptions of the model are (a) that the same memory source contributes to both priming and recognition performance and (b) that variance of the noise associated with priming measures is greater than…

In three experiments, we tested the hypothesis that those errors in immediate serial recall (ISR) that are attributable to phonological confusability share a locus with segmental errors in normal speech production. In the first two experiments, speech errors were elicited in the repeated paced reading of six-letter lists. The errors mirrored the…

This study had two major goals: to test the effect of administration method on the criterion validity of a commonly used working memory span test, the reading span task, and to examine the relationship between processing and storage in this task. With respect to the first goal, although experimenter- and participant-administered reading span tasks…

Verbal-to-spatial associations in working memory may index a core capacity for abstract information limited in the amount concurrently retained. However, what look like associative, abstract representations could instead reflect verbal and spatial codes held separately and then used in parallel. We investigated this issue in two experiments on…

This study explored the degree of verbal short-term memory deficit among individuals with Down syndrome and Williams syndrome, and the extent to which any such impairment could be accounted for by a relative slowing of rehearsal and output processes. Measures of serial recall and detailed assessments of speeded articulation for short and long…