Fourth, sixth, and eighth grade students studied a word learning task and were tested on three consecutive days. Expectancy statements were made by half the subjects. These results seemingly contradict previous research, but the contradiction was explained in terms of task complexity. Expectations were found to be motivational. (Author/BW)

Compared three techniques for teaching name-to-face associations to older adults. Participants (N=60) were divided into no image (control), image, and image plus judgment groups. Results showed strong improvement in remembering names when interactive imagery was used. Those in the image plus judgment group showed less forgetting in recall.…

The hypothesis that one factor underlying the feeling of knowing is the degree of prior learning for the sought-after item was explored. The magnitude of the feeling of knowing nonrecalled items increased with the degree of prior learning. (Author/PN)

Twelve- and 18-year-olds learned a list of paired associates; experimental subjects were instructed in mnemonics, while controls simply learned the pairings. When subjects were presented a list of Latin nouns and their translations to learn, spontaneous transfer of the mnemonic strategy occurred only among 18-year-olds. (Author/GDC)

In experiment 1, 48 first-grade children were presented one of four elaboration strategies or labeling instructions during a single study trial and then recalled 16 paired associates. In experiment 2, 32 first-grade children were trained over a four-day period in the use of an interrogative elaboration strategy or received labeling instructions.…

Convergent data suggest dissociated roles for the lateral (LA) and basolateral (BLA) amygdaloid nuclei in fear conditioning, depending on whether a discrete conditioned stimulus (CS)-unconditional stimulus (US) or context-US association is considered. Here, we show that pretraining inactivation of the BLA selectively impaired conditioning to…

The purposes of this study were to determine if test stimulus was a member of the memory set and if items in an interactive image held in short term memory (STM) could be scanned simultaneously. In experiment one, 50 university subjects compared a test word with a set of one to three words held in STM. The rate of STM search was obtained by…

Twenty institutionalized adult retardates (10 men, 10 women) were administered paired-associate bigrams (letter-letter, letter-number, number-letter) in an A-B, B-C, A-C paradigm. One-half of the items were designed to enhance positive transfer and one-half negative transfer, and each subject learned both in scrambled (nonsystematized bias)…

A study was conducted to determine the optimal presentation methods for teaching the phonetic alphabet which is characteristic of much of the symbolic material which forms part of the SAGE L-system operator task. This discrete-item, paired-associate material was prepared in six different formats: (1) long continuous-discourse program, overt…

Second graders were given training in monitoring the ability of strategies, the affective consequences of strategy use, or no strategy-monitoring training. When performing associative learning tasks under several instruction conditions, all training conditions produced short term effective strategy maintenance. However, only the strategy-utility…

Three paired-associate learning studies were designed to test the hypothesis that individual differences in learning speed are determined by the types of elaborative strategies used by learners during acquisition. Slow learners generate fewer elaborators and produce less effective elaborators, even when using the same strategy as fast learners.…

Study replicates and extends the results obtained by Attig and Hasher (1980) in finding null effects for adult age variation and instructional variation on a relative frequency judgment task. Finds nonsignificant covariation for both young and elderly adults between judgment proficiency and paired-associate learning proficiency. (Author)

A study of feedback delay, expectation, and development was conducted in grades four, six, and eight, to assess whether feedback on a school related learning task serves an informational or reinforcing function. Results indicate that feedback serves an informational function and delayed feedback facilitates retention, contrary to reinforcement…

Examined relationship of phonological awareness, verbal short-term memory, and visual-verbal paired associate (PA) learning with word recognition and decoding skills in 6- to 11- year-olds. Findings suggest that PA learning and phonological awareness tasks tap two separate mechanisms involved in learning to read. (Author/KB)

In three studies, the effects of visual and phonological distinctness on the visual-verbal paired associate learning of dyslexic and normal readers at the age of 10-12 were examined. We hypothesized that both groups would be equally affected by the visual distinctness of the pictures, whereas the learning performance of the dyslexic children would…