People with grapheme-colour synaesthesia have been shown to have enhanced memory on a range of tasks using both stimuli that induce synaesthesia (e.g. words) and, more surprisingly, stimuli that do not (e.g. certain abstract visual stimuli). This study examines the latter by using multi-featured stimuli consisting of shape, colour and location…

Learning induces dynamic changes to the actin cytoskeleton that are required to support memory formation. However, the molecular mechanisms that mediate filamentous actin (F-actin) dynamics during learning and memory are poorly understood. Myosin II motors are highly expressed in actin-rich growth structures including dendritic spines, and we have…

Early studies of memory-impaired patients with medial temporal lobe (MTL) damage led to the view that the hippocampus and related MTL structures are involved in the formation of long-term memory and that immediate memory and working memory are independent of these structures. This traditional idea has recently been revisited. Impaired performance…

Cognitive load theory is intended to provide instructional strategies derived from experimental, cognitive load effects. Each effect is based on our knowledge of human cognitive architecture, primarily the limited capacity and duration of a human working memory. These limitations are ameliorated by changes in long-term memory associated with…

This study presents the results of the impact of a short training on vocabulary learning strategies (VLSs). The aim was to raise participants' awareness of a wide range of VLSs and consequently to encourage and motivate them to utilize these strategies in their vocabulary learning. The participants were 29 Saudi male students in their first…

We examined the effects of aging on performance in an item-recognition experiment with confidence judgments. A model for confidence judgments and response time (RTs; Ratcliff & Starns, 2013) was used to fit a large amount of data from a new sample of older adults and a previously reported sample of younger adults. This model of confidence…

A group of preservice science teachers edited video footage of their practice teaching to identify and isolate critical incidents. They then wrote guided reflection papers on those critical incidents using different forms of media prompts while they wrote. The authors used a counterbalanced research design to compare the quality of writing that…

Based on the finding that children with mathematical learning difficulties (MLD) have deficits in working memory (WM), the question arises as to whether these children differ from typical learners only in the level or also in the developmental trajectories of WM functioning. To this end, the WM of 80 children with MLD and 71 typical learners was…

This study tested two cognitive models, learning styles and dual coding, which make contradictory predictions about how learners process and retain visual and auditory information. Learning styles-based instructional practices are common in educational environments despite a questionable research base, while the use of dual coding is less…

Visual History Archive, or VHA, is the world's largest database of videotaped and digitized Holocaust video testimony. The VHA originated with filmmaker Steven Spielberg, who consulted camp survivors when making his blockbuster film "Schindler's List" in 1993. Inspired by this collaboration, Spielberg went on to establish the Survivors…

This article is an epistemological reflection on memory practices in the construction, deconstruction, and reconstruction of collective memories of a historical event involving collective violence and conflict in formal and informal spaces of education. It focuses on the 1947 British India Partition of Punjab. The article engages with multiple…

Purpose: We set out to examine the impact of perceptual, linguistic, and capacity demands on performance of verbal working-memory tasks. The Ease of Language Understanding model (Rönnberg et al., 2013) provides a framework for testing the dynamics of these interactions within the auditory-cognitive system. Methods: Adult native speakers of English…

Two experiments examined the extent to which erroneous recall blocks veridical recall using, as a vehicle for study, the disruptive impact of distractors that are semantically similar to a list of words presented for free recall. Instructing participants to avoid erroneous recall of to-be-ignored spoken distractors attenuated their recall but this…

Comparisons of cognitive processing in monolinguals and bilinguals have revealed a bilingual advantage in inhibitory control. Recent studies have demonstrated advantages associated with exposure to two languages in infancy. However, the domain specificity and scope of the infant bilingual advantage in infancy remains unclear. In the present study,…

According to some views of cognitive growth, the development of working memory capacity can account for increases in the complexity of cognition. It has been difficult to ascertain, though, that there actually is developmental growth in capacity that cannot be attributed to other developing factors. Here we assess the role of item familiarity. We…