The cognitive input organization skill of clustering and its effect on recall were examined in 235 normal, learning disabled, and educable mentally retarded children within three mental age (MA) ranges (5 to 7 years, 7 to 9 years, and 9 to 11 years). Ss were assigned randomly to three conditions testing the effect of different levels of…

Sex differences in memory for human faces is reviewed. It is found that research evidence to date is not conclusive, but where differences exist they favor female superiority over males in facial memory. In particular, evidence is cited to suggest that females are reliably superior to males in their recognition memory for other females. This is…

Four groups of well-functioning senior citizens (6 males and 18 females per group) over the age of 65 were presented with a series of discrimination-learning problems. All were provided four pretraining problems, appropriate to their individual condition, and encouraging self-pacing. Two levels of problem complexity (four-dimensional vs.…

Forty elderly adults were required to memorize a list of 15 simple nouns belonging to three separate categories. The arrangement of the list of nouns (randomized or completely categorized) and instructions (instructed that the nouns could be in terms of categories or not instructed) were manipulated as factors. Individuals participating in the…

The present series of experiments was designed to examine the factors affecting the ability of people to draw inferences from a passage of text. It was found that, using a true-false recognition test, proportion correct was higher and reaction time shorter on inferred information than on information that was actually presented. This was the case…

The effectiveness of verbal and imaginal elaborations on the free recall of 50 educable mentally retarded adolescents was investigated. Ss were assigned to one of five conditions: experimenter-imposed verbalization (EV), experimenter imposed imagery (EI), subject-generated verbalization (SV), subject-generated imagery (SI), and control (C). Ss saw…

This study of children's memory was intended to: (1) extend a set of procedures used to study levels of processing in the memory of adults, and (2) study the development of the dynamic memory system unencumbered by developmentally influenced strategies in the areas of metamemory, encoding, organization and storage, and retrieval. Ninety-six…

If older children automatically label pictorial stimuli, then their performance should be impaired on tasks in which such labeling would increase the error rate. Children were asked to learn pairs of verbal or pictorial stimuli which, when combined, formed a different compound word (BUTTER-FLY). Subsequently, a false recognition test that included…

A major contribution of information-processing theory to the psychology of remembering is the concept of memory or information retrieval. Several theories of the fact retrieval processes of the human memory, which constitute a substrate for any cognitive ability requiring stored information, have drawn heavily on certain data processing…

This report describes a study of how maps are learned. Subjects (undergraduate students at the University of California) studied a simple map under various conditions and then answered questions about the map and drew the map from memory. It was found that local relations are learned before large-scale relations, that different types of map…

This report reviews and synthesizes psychological and educational research on learning strategies. The report contains an overview of strategy modification; a review of factors influencing strategy selection and use (including intellectual aptitude, personality variables, cognitive style, reception preference, motivation, sex, and prior…

The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of contextual knowledge on comprehension and retention of text material. The subjects were 144 high school students randomly assigned to experimental conditions. The subjects were provided with different types of information about the theme and context of various prose passages, and…

The National Institute of Education takes a fundamental approach to the problems it is addressing. This implies the creation of an intellectual framework for the problem areas, which can be used to systematize existing knowledge and research approaches and suggest promising new directions for research and development. Neural mechanisms of learning…

The purpose of this study was to determine if the Bransford and Franks linear effect is or is not a function of semantic integration. The subjects were 32 volunteers from two undergraduate psychology courses at the University of Georgia. Stimulus materials consisted of four meaningful (M) complex embedded English sentences and four meaningless…

This study is an attempt to partially confirm the hypothesis that first grade children, generally lacking the skills and/or capacities for efficiently organizing their memories for verbally-presented information, benefit from illustrations which provide a simple external memory. The sample consisted of 32 first grade (second semester) children,…