Applied life-span construct model by administering life drawing to 78 older women. Quantitative findings indicated that more positively adjusted women maintained external locus of control, were future oriented, and defined life-span in terms of family. Qualitative data revealed that women who described their lives in positive terms were those who…

Reported two studies of the possible relation of knowledge to improvements in recall. Tested 8- to 11-year-old children and college students for knowledge recall before and after they saw videotapes about birds. Although knowledge and memory measures correlated, and most knowledge measures improved after children viewed the videotapes, recall and…

Tested infants at five and seven months of age for visual novelty preference. Tested the same infants at 12, 24, and 36 months by means of a battery of cognitive and language tests that compare novelty preference to general and specific cognitive abilities. Results support recent findings that infant novelty preference is predictive of later IQ.…

The relationship between partial word knowledge and instruction was investigated for 132 college students. When correct usage could be chosen on the basis of general semantic constraints, subjects did well and instruction had no effect. However, studying dictionary definitions did increase the amount of specific information available in memory.…

Five experiments were used to determine whether and why second graders, fourth graders, and college students differ in modifying causal inferences about a surprising event in a story. Illustrated how encoding and retrieval factors contribute to inference modification. Results showed small developmental increases in inference modification in…

Two studies compared the effects of imagery-based instruction and rote learning on the long-term recall of English translations of Chinese ideographs. In no instance was there any indication that imagery-based mnemonics conferred an advantage beyond the immediate test of recall. (27 references) (Author/LB)

Investigates how adult readers represent causal relations among events in a narrative, specifically by testing two models of text comprehension, the linear chain of text model versus the network model. Provides support for a network model of the representation of causal relations in narratives. (HB)

Long-term memory differences between 30 mentally retarded and 30 nonretarded young adults were assessed. Subjects studied a picture book after receiving semantic or nonsemantic encoding instructions. Semantic encoding improved the retarded subjects' recognition memory. Once items were encoded at a deep level, the long-term recognition of all…

Examines the relative contributions of both verbal ability and prior knowledge to comprehension and memory for a televised movie, in both immediate and delayed recall conditions. Suggests that, although both factors aid in the comprehension process, they do so in different ways. (SR)

A review is offered of various bilingual memory studies that have been carried out during the past quarter century. Most of the studies have employed lexical items as the investigative tool, tested outside of a grammatical or semantic context. (Contains 58 references.) (JL)

A study presented four groups of chess players (child experts and novices, adult experts and novices) with short-term memory tasks involving meaningful and random chess positions, as well as a control board composed of geometric-shaped spaces and pieces. Found that child experts' immediate recall for meaningful chess positions was far superior to…

Explores heritage museums as sites of cultural production in terms of the distinction drawn by historians between "memory" and "history," denoting fundamentally opposed orientations toward the past. Examines the discursive practices of museum guides in Israeli settlement museums, and suggests a more nuanced view of the…

Order and entropy exist in all human and environmental processes. Technological innovation begins with entropy, and problem solving creates order. Humans learn by building order through conceptualizing but create entropy by not using a wider range of learning methods. (SK)

Investigates the basis of short-term memory deficits for children with reading disability and explores the origin of developmental verbal memory span increases. Finds a strong relationship between efficiency of phonological processes and capacity of verbal memory but no relationship between phonological processing and nonverbal memory. (RS)

Two experiments with 112 college students investigated how subjects might modulate their reading strategies as a function of how they expect to be tested. Test-expectancy subjects, regardless of the test expected, are more apt to identify and focus on important information than are subjects without a specific test expectancy. (SLD)