Two experiments explored six and nine year olds' memory and comprehension of sentences describing spatial or linear relationships. When subjects were instructed to recognize only verbatim sentences, memory was independent of reasoning. When subjects were specifically instructed to recognize the gist of sentences, however, memory and reasoning were…

Grossberg's principles of neural modeling are reviewed and extended to provide a neural level theory to explain how analogies greatly increase the rate of learning and can make learning and retention possible. (PR)

This study investigated whether phonological working memory was associated with spoken language development in 38 preschool children. Significant differences were found, with children who had good phonological memory abilities producing language that was more grammatically complex, contained a richer array of words, and included longer utterances…

Two experiments examined whether infants might use the prosody of sentences to organize and remember spoken information. Results suggest that infants better remember phonetic properties of words prosodically linked together within a single clause rather than a list, and words that are prosodically linked within a single clausal unit as opposed to…

The uncertain status of cognitive inhibitory mechanisms is addressed, focusing on their function in memory retrieval. Four experiments with 249 college students show that classical associative theories of interference are insufficient as accounts of forgetting and that inhibitory processes must be at work. (SLD)

A class of multinomial models for source monitoring is developed and evaluated. These models are capable of taking data from source-monitoring models and separately measuring the cognitive capacities that underlie such data. Usefulness of the models is demonstrated with published data from areas of reality monitoring and bilingual memory. (SLD)

Discusses the establishment of collective memory studies. Addresses six premises for collective remembering that are basic to contemporary scholarship: that collective memory is processual, unpredictable, partial, useable, both particular and universal, and material. Discusses the future of collective memory studies. (SR)

Recall was assessed three times for older adults in three groups: (1) participants in self-taught memory training (n=22); (2) delayed-training control group (n=24); and (3) attention-placebo group (n=23). The self-taught group's recall was superior to the control but equal to the attention-placebo group. Self-teaching resulted in improved…

Meta analysis of 22 studies testing 1,598 subjects revealed that aging has a great effect on intentional memory for spatial location. However, methodological limits were found: fewer than half of the studies controlled for age differences in visual acuity or did not use a test phase of fixed duration. (SK)

Finds that perceptual identification of target words explicitly presented was significantly higher than that of new targets and that targets inferred to maintain coherence and targets predicted by the text were identified as well as explicit targets and significantly better than targets schematically appropriate to the text. (SR)

George A. Miller's essay gives a clear account of information theory and demonstrates how the concept of limited channel capacity can be applied across sensory dimensions. Its major influence has been demonstrating that immediate memory span is relatively insensitive to the amount of information per item. (SLD)

Investigated predictive value of three aspects of memory potentially related to success or failure in self-medication program. Results showed that combination of memory measures successfully discriminated between those subjects who advanced in program and those who did not. Results provide information that will aid in improving selection process…

This study examined the effectiveness of using "subject-performed tasks" to improve memory efficiency of eight autistic children. The procedure involved instructing children to carry out and later remember a series of actions. The procedure's effectiveness was attributed to autistic subjects' lack of verbal encoding strategies and…

Three experiments involving children and adults investigated age differences in repetition priming effects as contrasted with explicit recall and recognition. Findings showed that recall increased with age, but priming effects did not differ with age. Results suggest that implicit memory is insensitive to age differences and to encoding and delay…

In their answers to questions about a novel event, children were as accurate as adults when responding to open-ended questions, and four year olds were more likely than six and eight year olds and adults to change responses to yes-no questions. Adults speculated more frequently than did children when they answered specific questions. (BC)