Twenty-four preschool-age girls repeatedly experienced an initially novel episode in a laboratory setting. Each child's knowledge of the episode was assessed in an effort to examine the development of the children's scripts for a recurring event. (PCB)

Explores the role of news teasers on memory and attention for commercials in evening newscasts. Finds that they enhance moderately the primacy-recency pattern found in visual and verbal memory scores. Finds that news teasers appear to have an effect on processing strategies employed by viewers. (SR)

Interviews 105 women in outpatient treatment for substance abuse to examine their recollections of childhood sexual abuse. Overall, 54% reported a history of childhood sexual abuse. Of these, 81% remembered all or part of the abuse their whole lives, whereas the remainder regained previously forgotten memories. (SLD)

Belgian participants (n=129) in seven types of memory training rated the training too short but useful. Most enrolled concern about memory deterioration; 41% increased memory awareness. However, no effect was found on pre/postprogram scales of the Memory Function Questionnaire. (SK)

Twelve women (mean age 90) in a nursing home listened to Golden Age radio programs and answered trivia questions. Reactions to musical programs showed they encouraged reminiscence; trivia stimulated recall of historical and life events. In contrast, comedy programs evoked little response. (SK)

Notes that fuzzy-trace theory has been used to understand false memories of children. Demonstrates the irony imbedded in the theory, maintaining that a central implication of fuzzy-trace theory is that some errors characterized as false memories are not really false at all. These errors, when applied to false alarms to related lures, are best…

Forty-eight children, either with or without a sensorineural hearing loss and either young (6 and 7 years old) or older (9 and 10 years old) reproduced sequences of acoustic stimuli that varied in number, temporal spacing, and type. Results suggested that the poorer performance of the hearing-impaired children was due to auditory processing…

Three experiments assessed memory skills in good and poor comprehenders, matched for decoding skill. Found that poor comprehenders showed normal sensitivity to phonological manipulations but that their recall of abstract words was poor. Poor comprehenders achieved normal spatial-memory span, but had impaired verbal-memory spans. (Author/KB)

Uses W. Kintsch's Construction Integration model as a framework to explore the effects of preexisting attitudes on memory for texts. Shows that preexisting attitudes interacted with attitude texts over delay although not in a direct or expected fashion. Emphasizes the need to manipulate representational levels of attitude texts and to consider…

Examined 4-year olds' strategy development using a new kind of "same-different" judgment task that minimized memory demands. Found that children's spontaneous behavior was highly strategic, and over trials it developed differently for "same" and "different" trials. Most children who did not spontaneously use the most…

Reviews studies which concluded that brief fantasy exercises can create false memories in preschool children. Raises important issue about the credibility of memory-creation research with preschool children. States that there are social costs in perpetuating information derived from studies that were not appropriately designed to adequately test…

This paper reports on two studies that compared the memory of children with autism for personally experienced events with that of memory for events experienced by a peer. The children with autism recalled events performed by themselves significantly less well than observed events performed by a peer. The opposite was true for typical children and…

Relationships among continuous performance test (CPT), IQ, achievement, and memory/learning scores were explored for 1,280 children about 9 years old. Associations among the CPT measures and various cognitive/academic tasks suggest that all require attention and inhibition. The importance of assessing attention and disinhibition in psychological…

Six experiments involving a total of 112 college students demonstrate that a robust memory for visual context exists to guide spatial attention. Results show how implicit learning and memory of visual context can guide spatial attention toward task-relevant aspects of a scene. (SLD)

Reports on searching the data files of the "Memory of Reading" project. Presents images that evoke social memory from reading practices in Brazil. (PA)