The study assessed the eye movements of 60 adult German readers during silent reading of target words, consisting of two and three syllables, embedded in sentences. The first objective was to assess whether the inhibitory effect of first syllable frequency, which was up to now primarily shown for isolated words, generalises to natural reading. The…

Based on a 2-component framework of episodic memory development across the lifespan (Shing & Lindenberger, 2011), we examined the contribution of memory-related binding and monitoring processes to false memory susceptibility in childhood and old age. We administered a repeated continuous recognition task to children (N = 20, 10-12 years),…

This study analysed the effects of a classroom intervention focusing on phonological awareness and/or automatized word recognition in children with a deficit in the domains of phonological awareness and rapid automatized naming ("double deficit"). According to the double-deficit hypothesis (Wolf & Bowers, 1999), these children belong…

Effects of syllable structure and of alphabetic reading skills on the development of phoneme awareness were investigated in a longitudinal study. Awareness of phonemes in syllable onsets and codas was examined in first graders speaking Czech (n = 45) and German (n = 33). Czech children showed higher awareness of phonemes in onsets than in codas,…

Two comprehension experiments were conducted to investigate whether German children are able to use the grammatical cues of word order and word endings (case markers) to identify agents and patients in a causative sentence and whether they weigh these two cues differently across development. Two-year-olds correctly understood only sentences with…

People can intuitively detect whether a word triad has a common remote associate (coherent) or does not have one (incoherent) before and independently of actually retrieving the common associate. The authors argue that semantic coherence increases the processing fluency for coherent triads and that this increased fluency triggers a brief and…

Using lexical decision, the effects of primes of different length on spoken word recognition were evaluated in three partial repetition priming experiments. Prime length was determined via gating (Experiments 1a and 2a). It was shorter than, equivalent to, or longer than the recognition point (RP), or a complete word. In Experiments 1b and 1c,…

Assesses developmental changes in verbal memory from the beginning of elementary school to late adolescence on the basis of data from the Munich Longitudinal Study. Suggests that overall, individual differences in verbal memory performance develop very early in life and are relatively unaffected by differences in educational experiences. (Contains…

Uses preschool tests of general verbal ability, verbal memory span, phonological awareness, lexical access speed and accuracy, and letter knowledge in preschool as independent measures predicting performance on second-grade reading comprehension, word discrimination, and word decoding speed. Finds differential main effects and interactions but a…

Tested serial work recall of young and old adults in an effort to examine developmental reserve capacity in old age. Results showed magnification of differences early in training, and prediction of posttraining scores by the digit symbol substitution variable. (BC)

The present work examined the influence of topic interest on the strength of different components of text representation and long-term retention according to the model of text processing by van Dijk and Kintsch (1983). A Series of relevant personality characteristics were assessed to control for alternative explanations of interest effect, A total…