The Model of Human Occupation was used to design a program to train and support four dementia patients in daily living activities focused on motor skills and procedural memory. The Assessment for Motor and Process Skills showed gains for three of the four, paralleled by a decrease in the amount of support needed from therapists in task…

A study that has uncovered robust memories among former students for material learned in a college course after as long as 11 years is discussed. This is in contrast to the widespread conviction that the passing of years wipes away most recollections of concepts and facts learned in school. (KR)

Using 49 undergraduates, short-term memory (STM) spans, STM probe-recall tasks, and complex working memory (WM) spans were studied to assess the relationships among STM, WM, and verbal ability. Results indicate that STM and WM are separate cognitive constructs, and that both STM and WM are important to verbal abilities. (SLD)

In one experiment, third graders induced to use organizational strategies demonstrated better recall than did students trained in strategy use. In a second experiment, third graders exposed to categorical materials exhibited better recall than other third graders; and sixth graders exhibited better recall of functionally related than…

Total of 305 adults ranging from 19-84 years of age and 100 college students were given a battery of tests that measured cognitive abilities and memory. Results indicated that a large proportion of age-related variance in cognition and memory was reduced when statistical control procedures, such as hierarchical regression, were used to eliminate…

Children's memory of single infant experience was evaluated. At 6.5 months, infants participated in study of reaching in light and dark for sounding object. Children repeated dark procedure in laboratory when they were either one year or two years older. Older children with infant experience reached and grasped the sounding object significantly…

Results revealed some integration of text and tune in both preschoolers' and adults' memory of a song, with the degree of integration greater for adults than for children. Children's memory for one song component (most often the words) did not especially facilitate their memory for the other component (the tune). (RH)

Tests G. Armstrong's and B. Greenberg's model of the effect of background television on cognitive performance, applied to reading comprehension and memory. Finds significant deleterious effects of background television, stronger and more consistent effects when testing immediately after reading, and more consistently negative effects resulting…

Discrimination and phonetic identification abilities of children (ages 5-6) with language impairments were compared to those of normally developing 4-year-olds and previous findings on children and adults. Results support hypotheses suggesting disorders in the phonological component of working memory in children with language impairments and the…

This report describes the development of the Family Background Questionnaire, a 179-item instrument with 22 subscales designed to assess memories of family characteristics. Results with 1,020 college students in three separate studies for initial reliability and validity, factor analysis, and test-retest reliability support the reliability and…

A new procedure, the Letter Memory Test, was developed for evaluating adequacy of effort given during neuropsychological testing. It is a computer-administered forced-choice recognition task. In three studies involving nearly 400 patients and community volunteers, the test discriminated among poorly and highly motivated groups, and its internal…

Presents a unified theoretical approach to children's false-memory reports that deals with both spontaneous and implanted reports. Details false recognition and misinformation models that allow researchers to determine the impact of identity judgment, nonidentity judgment, and similarity judgment in false memory reports. (LBT)

Notes that there has been far less mathematical modeling of children's memory than of adults' memory. Explores the flaw in fuzzy-trace model, and maintains that situations in which partial verbatim information is used along with partial gist information fall outside the boundary of this type of model. Suggests refining the concepts of and…

Notes that a multitude of studies have demonstrated that misleading postevent information affects people's memories. Contents that the fuzzy-trace theory is a positive step toward understanding the malleability of memory. Discusses fuzzy-trace theory in terms of three primary areas of study: altered response format, maximized misinformation…

Notes that spontaneous false memories are a routine part of everyday memory and more common than implanted false memory. Commends the fuzzy-trace theory for the separation and explanation of these two sources of inaccuracy. Demonstrates the theory's handling of three phenomena concerning the creation and maintenance of false memories. (LBT)