The best research studies are more noteworthy for the issues they raise than for the questions they answer. Being informative is good; being heuristic is better. The two papers under consideration are heuristic as well as informative. Thus, Wong, Kasari, Freeman, and Paparella (2007) provide an answer to the question of what might influence the…

Some patients considered for left temporal lobectomy for epilepsy present with normal verbal learning and no MRI evidence of hippocampal pathology. In order to preserve learning function, the surgical approach in these cases often aims at sparing the hippocampus. Parahippocampal structures, including the left perirhinal region, however, also…

This study investigated the verbal and visuospatial processing and storage skills of children with SLI and typically developing children. Fourteen school-age children with SLI, and two groups of typically developing children matched either for age or language abilities, completed measures of processing speed and storage capacity, and a set of…

Analysis of the study involving 12 language disordered and 12 normal students (mean age 10 years) suggested that rehearsal and recall reflect three components' capacity for item and order information, semantic, organization, and susceptibility to nonlist intrusion. The predominant differences between groups were in capacity and intrusions.…

Despite the importance of good lecture notes to test performance, very little is known about the cognitive processes that underlie effective lecture note taking. The primary purpose of the 2 studies reported (a pilot study and Study 1) was to investigate 3 processes hypothesized to be significantly related to quality of notes: transcription…

The ability of learning disabled children to process, retain, and retrieve verbal information was investigated within a series of information-processing tasks, revealing that both the rate and level at which Ss processed information were below the standards set by normal reading contemporaries. (Author/CL)

An intervening variable between perceptual deficits and academic learning--verbal mediation processes--is explored. Research reviewed, primarily that of A. Luria, leads to the conclusion that verbal mediational processes can compensate for perceptual learning process deficits. Relevant teaching applications are discussed. (Author)

This study examined neuropsychological deficits among children with bipolar disorder while attending to its comorbidity with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Seventy-three unmedicated children (ages 6-17 years) with Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed.; American Psychiatric Association, 1994) bipolar…

The standardization data for the California Verbal Learning Test-Second Edition (CVLT-II; D. C. Delis, J. H. Kramer, E. Kaplan, & B. A. Ober, 2000) were used to evaluate the base rate of 6 specific discrepancies between various key variables. The results indicated that CVLT-II performance discrepancies should equal or exceed 1 or 1.5 z score…

The article demonstrates how verbal elaboration can be used effectively to facilitate preschoolers' creative play. It is suggested that rather than being an artifact of incidental learning, creative play should be planned and structured actively within the preschool curriculum. (Author/DB)

Examined verbal learning/memory in 60 male alcoholics. Results indicated that the predicted relative impairment of alcoholics with more difficult material did not occur, nor did the groups' learning curves differ, suggesting that rote associative learning either remains intact or recovers satisfactorily with abstinence. (Author/BL)

Discusses research showing that material people learn when in a high arousal state and material they learn when in a normal arousal state is subsequently best recalled when they are in a similar arousal state. Speculates that this effect may partially underlie mood cuing, mood-related material from memory. (EKN)

Three profoundly retarded adults who were taught action-object responses learned the verbal elements in the instructions they were directly taught and responded to these elements in novel recombined instructions. (Author/CL)

Three groups of 34 learning disabled children (12 to 16 years old) and one control group of normal readers were asked to retain verbal material across distrator intervals ranging from 9 to 24 seconds. LD children's retention of verbal material is more susceptible to interference from similar material than normals. (Author)

The purpose of this study is to determine the latent structure of the California Verbal Learning Test-Second Edition (CVLT-II; Delis, Kramer, Kaplan, & Ober, 2000) at three different age levels, using the standardization sample. Maximum likelihood confirmatory factor analyses are performed to test four competing hypothetical models for fit and…