To learn if differences in age, intelligence, and sex account for differences in children's memory of TV commercials and "degree of insistence" (DI) after viewing them, 54 gifted, 71 normal, and 53 educable mentally retarded children (of both sexes, 7-13 years) were questioned. The mediating influence of the three independent variables on DI was…

Only a longitudinal study, in which retrospective reports can be verified against data collected earlier, can determine what topics tend to be reported accurately and whether certain types of individuals are more likely to be accurate reporters. A representative group of adults (N=60) who became parents 50 years ago are now part of the oldest and…

Korean, Chinese, and American children were given identical free-narrative interviews about life events and were shown a narrated story. Children were then interviewed about the story. Compared to others, Americans provided more references to specific past events, more descriptives, more references to internal states, and more mentions of…

High verbal subjects were much faster than low verbal subjects in making taxonomic category identity matches and homophone identity matches. High verbals were also faster in making physical identity matches. Males did not differ from females in the time required for any matching tasks; however, they made slightly more errors. (Author/MV)

A study of the effects of three types of conservation judgments (qualitative, quantitative, and equivalence) on both continuous and discontinuous substances in 24, 4-, 5-, and 6-year-olds. Subjects were tested on conservation ability with and without verbal justification. Half of the subjects were provided a memory aid, the other half were not.…

Surveyed 100 older adults to determine kinds of memorabilia and cherished objects they would identify and how these were related to reminiscence and current mood as measured by Affect-Balance Scale. Found significant positive relationship between memorabilia and mood; total lack of cherished objects was associated with significantly lower mood…

Although the accuracy of the diagnosis of cognitive impairment in the elderly depends on the appropriateness of the norms for the neuropsychological tests used, the importance of examining health status, native intelligence, and gender when attempting to describe cognitive changes of aging has received little attention. The Rey Auditory Verbal…

Analysis of the frequency and nature of error and post-error responses in serial choice reaction times of 84 children between 5 and 12 years essentially replicate findings in adults. (Author/MP)

Two studies tested the hunter-gatherer theory predicting that females should have better incidental memory for objects and locations than males. Subjects were 3- to 6-year olds and adults. Results indicated that females and males remembered more toys or objects congruent with their own sex but that there was no overall advantage for females.…

An overt rehearsal procedure was used to study the relationship between 48 third- and 48 sixth-grade children's rehearsal strategies and their memory performance under difficult conditions of test expectation. This study addressed the question of why active rehearsal content results in superior recall performances. (MS)

A study of recorded and analyzed inspection times in a picture recognition memory task involving three different delays between inspection and test. Subjects were 108 4-, 6-, and 8-year-old children. (Author/SDH)

Spatial span (Corsi's block tapping) and verbal span (Wechsler Digits Forward) were measured in 1113 children (ages 4-10) from urban and rural districts of Italy. The urban group performed significantly better on both tests. Sex differences, favoring boys, were found only on the spatial span test. (Author/SJL)