In word learning, learners need to identify the referent of words by leveraging the fact that the same word may co-occur with different sets of objects. This raises the question, what do children remember from "in the moment" that they can use for cross-situational learning? Furthermore, do children represent pictures of familiar animals…

One developmental task faced by children is to identify, remember, and learn from epistemic and moral agents around them who are known to be good or virtuous. Here, in 2 studies, we examined U.S children's (N = 138; 55% female, 45% male; predominantly White, middle-class) memory processes for agents varying in moral and epistemic virtue. In Study…

Accurately remembering how and when one's own learning occurs is an important metacognitive skill that matures during the early school years. In two studies, the impact of a delay on this ability was examined. In Study 1, 30 children in two age groups (4-year-olds and 5-year-olds) participated in two-staged learning events and were interviewed…

In any learning situation, children must decide the level of generality with which to encode information. Cues to generality may affect children's memory for different components of a learning episode. In this research, we investigated whether 1 cue to generality, generic language, affects children's memory for information about social categories…

The detection of specific factors of the developmental dyslexia at an early stage, and the identification of the role of those factors responsible for its manifestation, is a fundamental area of study on dyslexia in the recent literature. The objective of the present study is to clarify that dysfunctions in the following specific domains…

The development of reading-related phonological processing abilities represents an important developmental milestone in the process of learning to read. In this cross-sectional study, confirmatory factor analysis was used to examine the structure of phonological processing abilities in 129 younger preschoolers (M = 40.88 months, SD = 4.65) and 304…

Two studies investigated the relationship between learning names and learning concepts in preschool children. More specifically, we focused on the relationship between learning the names and learning the intended functions of artifacts, given that the intended function of an artifact is generally thought to constitute core conceptual information…

The short-term recall of word-triads was tested, comparing retention over three types of intervals within 24 preschoolers. Results suggest that the condition effect in short-term recall did not disrupt the long-term storage of the items. (Author/CS)

Assessed the influence of mnemonic and attentional aids on children's double-alternation learning, in a prediction situation in which subject had to learn to produce two consecutive responses of the alternate types. (Author/AJ)

The purpose of this study was to ascertain (1) whether young children are able to recognize a need to check response accuracy and memory verification and (2) what strategies they use. A model of the nursery room was used to assess 37 preschoolers' recognition, recall, and spatial memory for school objects. Children were asked to verify their…

This paper is concerned with memory functions in sequentially structured behavior. Twenty-five 4- and 5-year-old preschool children participated in a prediction experiment in which a stack of cards (each card alternately having a patch of red or green tape on it) was displayed to the child. The child was presented with a card and asked to predict…

The ability of nursery school children to associate pairs of toys was assessed under four experimental conditions: (1) control, (2) subjects manipulating the toys, (3) subjects generating a sentence, and (4) subjects generating a sentence while manipulating the toys. All three subject-involvement conditions produced significantly better…

Ten boys and 10 girls ages 29-35 months, were tested individually on a memory task requiring free recall of two-item lists. No sex differences in response were noted. The mean number of correct responses and the mean number of correct pairs were higher for related items, and, in addition, the children frequently reported the last object they saw…

This study tests the hypothesis that labeling facilitates recall in nursery school children if and only if it leads to rehearsal. Subjects were 34 children ranging in age from 47 to 53 months. During pretraining, those children in the Label group named pictures of animals and fruits as they were presented, while those in the No Label group matched…

Grade 1 literacy skills of twin children in Australia (New South Wales) and the United States (Colorado) were explored in a genetically sensitive design (N = 319 pairs). Analyses indicated strong genetic influence on word and nonword identification, reading comprehension, and spelling. Rapid naming showed more modest, though reliable, genetic…