While mnemonic systems have been taught and used for hundreds of years, virtually all of the experimental research into such systems has been conducted since 1965. This paper describes four mnemonic systems, all of which rely heavily on visual imagery, and summarizes research conducted on the performance values of each system. The link system, the…

The purpose of this study was to further investigate performance differences between reflective and impulsive subjects on a recognition memory task. Other researchers have proposed that these differences are based on visual analysis and that they are relatively independent of verbal processes. To test this contention, a sentence recognition task…

The relationship between retention of story propositions and inferences was studied in two experiments on groups of children who averaged five and eight years in age. In the first experiment, the motives and theme of protagonists were varied and found to affect the number and kind of inferences made by eight-year-olds. The increase in the number…

One of many aspects of the linguistic centrality of the spoken word is the "acoustic trigger" to conceptualization, the most significant primal trigger in human beings, which when activated results in contrast and comparison leading to symbolic conceptualization. The oral/aural mode, or vocal production and acoustic perception, is developmentally…

Several aspects of gender concept development were investigated in 60 children of mixed socioeconomic background ranging in age from three to six years. Tasks were designed to assess gender constancy, knowledge of sex-stereotypes, differential memory and preference for sex-typed material, and gender categorization. Cognitive maturity was assessed…

Reading research and reading instruction can each be grouped in two distinct categories, depending on the assumed source of control for the particular reading act that is studied or taught. "Outside-in" theorists view the reading process as beginning with print and ending with some representation or interpretation inside the brain, while…

This paper describes two studies which investigated the development in elementary school children of the ability to derive inferences about the subjective states (physiological and psychological) of others. A cued recall procedure was utilized to assess the relative effectiveness of implicitly or explicitly stated emotional states as cues for…

Developments that laid the groundwork for the modern psychology of attitude began with early Greek philosophy. Conceptions of the cosmologists during the Golden Age of Greek Civilization and the Sophist movement served as a link between mythology and science. Contributions of British Empiricism and German Experimentalism were instrumental to the…

High, middle, and low readers in kindergarten, second, and fourth grades participated in a study of inferential comprehension. The Jett-Simpson Classification System for Verbalized Inference was developed, its reliability was established, and children's open responses to a wordless picture book, "Frog Goes to Dinner," were analyzed using…

The hypothesis that reading difficulty of learning disabled (LD) children is attributable to deficiencies in verbal encoding was investigated with 60 LD and normal children (mean CA=9.1, mean IQ=103.5). Ss were compared on recall of a serial short-term memory task after pre-training of named and unnamed stimulus conditions. Data suggested that…

This study investigates cognitive dissonance and self-perception theories, utilizing the bogus pipeline to measure attitude change. Subjects were 48 college students. They were assigned randomly to one of four experimental groups, on the basis of extreme "pro" scores on an issue dealing with student participantion in university course…

Ninety children in third and fourth grade were assessed on a hierarchical class inclusion task. Scores were trichotomized, and children from each level were randomly assigned to one of three cueing conditions (no cues, two superordinate cues, six subordinate cues). Subjects were administered a recall task of categorized words and "new" words…

Children are ready to learn to read when they are young and enjoy learning to read when they understand each step in the reading process, so that their cognitive growth is significatnly stimulated. This book presents the structural approach to teaching both reading readiness skills and reading and points out that teachers and parents must…

Operant magical thinking (belief that thought can significantly alter reality) and reading comprehension were examined in samples of Pupils 7 to 13 years old identified as either gifted, normal, or emotionally disturbed. Sixty-eight children were sampled in a school for gifted children, in a regular suburban elementary school, and in an in-patient…

The Department of English at Wayne State University is planning to introduce a doctoral program directed to the processes involved in the composition of expository prose. Students admitted to the program will be trained primarily in linguistics and cognitive psychology, though they will also work in communication theory and rhetorical analysis.…