Perceptual Learning Style theory (PLS) claims that the presentation of information in either a visual, auditory or kinaesthetic format will improve the learning of selected individuals due to the dominance of one or more modality in their information gathering. The modality dominance of six Western classical pianists in higher music education was…

Research has shown that consistently right-handed individuals have poorer memory than do inconsistently right- or left-handed individuals under baseline conditions but more reliably exhibit enhanced memory retrieval after making a series of saccadic eye movements. From this it could be that consistent versus inconsistent handedness, regardless of…

Research on retrieval-induced forgetting has shown that retrieval can cause the forgetting of related or competing items in memory (Anderson, Bjork, & Bjork, 1994). In the present research, we examined whether an analogous phenomenon occurs in the context of creative problem solving. Using the Remote Associates Test (RAT; Mednick, 1962), we…

The present study tested the dual-component model of working memory capacity (WMC) by examining estimates of primary memory and secondary memory from an immediate free recall task. Participants completed multiple measures of WMC and general intellectual ability as well as multiple trials of an immediate free recall task. It was demonstrated that…

Working memory updating (WMU) has been identified as a cognitive function of prime importance for everyday tasks and has also been found to be a significant predictor of higher mental abilities. Yet, little is known about the constituent processes of WMU. We suggest that operations required in a typical WMU task can be decomposed into 3 major…

Compared the early recollections of 50 first-borns and 98 later-borns. The first-borns mentioned significantly more nonfamily members, illness/injury, hospital/doctor's office. Later-borns mentioned significantly more siblings than did first-borns. Findings were discussed in the context of Adler's personality theory. (JAC)

Factors affecting the failure to use world knowledge to complete an otherwise incomplete linear ordering was examined. Failure persisted after three repetitions was unaffected by order of presentation or nature of test procedure. Performance was affected by overall amounts of known and new information and by their relation. (Author/RD)

In a study of individual differences in long-term memory access, university undergraduates verified (1) whether an item was a member of a category; (2) whether two items belonged in the same category; and (3) whether two words had the same name. Reaction times from these tasks were correlated with verbal ability, as measured by performance on a…

Although metamemory has recently received renewed interest by several investigators, individual differences in memory skills have received little if any attention. While individual differences in memory skills have common sense validity, these differences have been difficult to document experimentally. This study used a repeated measures design to…

Compares young and older adults' production of complex syntactic structures in Russian. Finds that content and fluency in Russian were associated with Russian vocabulary knowledge and influenced by educational level and knowledge of English and other languages and that working-memory limitations affect the use of clause and word order variations…

The latency and amplitude of the P300, an event-related potential, during the performance of a memory-scanning task were used as indices of the efficiency of information processing that may mediate individual differences in intelligence. Results with 61 female college students contradict a pure speed of processing explanation of the relationship…

Explores individual differences in general memory ability and the relation to performance in a public examination, taken at age 15-16 years. Suggests that individual differences in memory ability account for between 10 and 20 percent of the variance in groups of above-average IQ. Includes references. (CMK)

Five experiments with 586 college students investigated how ability differences, learning task characteristics, and motivational and volitional processes combine to explain performance differences in an associative memory or substitution task. Results are discussed in terms of developing a more comprehensive understanding of learner differences.…

Examines information-processing differences among four types of readers differing in reading comprehension and speed. Finds that good comprehenders outperformed poor comprehenders on all types of tasks, but the results were less clear for the high- and low-speed readers. Proposes differences in working memory as a source of individual differences…

Measurement and psychometric quality of the Sternberg task (S. Sternberg, 1966, 1969), a memory search task, was investigated with 78 undergraduates. Individual performance was fairly homogeneous across responses, fairly unstable over time, and fairly stable across stimulus content. Implications for individual differences research are discussed.…