Classroom demonstrations of empirically supported learning and memory strategies have the potential to boost students' knowledge about their own memory and convince them to change the way they approach memory tasks in and beyond the classroom. Students in a "Human Learning and Memory" course learned about the "Method of Loci"…

Seductive details are interesting, but sometimes irrelevant to the target material present in texts and lectures. In the current study, 388 undergraduate students read six paragraphs describing Sigmund Freud's psychosexual stages (i.e., target material). Participants in four groups also read one of two biographical paragraphs. The biographical…

This article challenges Yaakov Kareev's (1995a, 2000) argument regarding the positive bias of intuitive correlation estimates due to working memory capacity limitations and its adaptive value. The authors show that, under narrow window theory's primacy effect assumption, there is a considerable between-individual variability of the effects of…

Three experiments examined the notion that children's primacy and recency in the probe-type pictorial memory task are related to the spatial distinctiveness of the "leftmost" and "rightmost" items presented. Data suggest that preschoolers and older children alike are able to code temporal order along with the corresponding…

The spatial and temporal components of a serial position recall task were experimentally manipulated in a study using kindergarten, first grade, and second grade children to determine the factors involved in the primacy effect. (BRT)

In three experiments using a single-trial, free-recall procedure, subjects were sometimes presented a forget cue during a list, meaning that they were not responsible for recalling any of the words which preceded it, only those which followed it. Since the primacy effect over the functional beginning of such lists was not diminished, the proactive…

Comments on some methodological problems involved in determining the relationship between initial output order and subsequent recall, particularly in the light of the results reported by Morris (AA 527 380). (Author/RK)

Answers the criticism of John Gardiner and Peter Herriot (AA 527 381) and while agreeing with their comments on the misleading influence of Vincentized data, author rejects their specific criticisms. (RK)

Results of two experiments suggested (1) that spatial cues serve as functional stimuli in the standard probe-type task, and (2) that the contextual uniqueness of the first item is probably responsible for the occurrence of primacy in young children. (Author/JMB)

Explores the effect of stimulus familiarity on the spatial primacy performance of normal and retarded children. Assumes that serial recall tasks reflect spatial memory rather than verbal rehearsal. (BD)

The present study was designed to investigate the effects of stimulus presentation rate on recall and primacy-recency effects in children. Results indicated that the traditional interpretation of the primacy effect as reflecting long-term memory store may not be valid. (Author/SB)

Children's short-term memory was studied under two experimental conditions: one in which recall was expected to be facilitated because of the provision of a study period, and one in which a distracting task was imposed that was expected to interfere with recall. Forty subjects at each of two age levels, 7 and 11 years, were tested in a…

Four possible mechanisms for short-term item recognition are distinguished. Manipulations of recency, particularly of negative probe items, provide critical tests. Two experiments were conducted using Sternberg's varied-set reaction time paradigm, coupled with procedures intended to minimize rehearsal and control the recency of probes and memory…

Examined the use of rehearsal strategies by deaf and normal children. (BD)