Three groups of fourth graders who differed on a metamemory pre-test were compared on five working memory tasks to explore the relationship between metamemorial knowledge, total processing space (M-space) and working memory span performance. Children in each group received three versions of each task on concurrent days. It was hypothesized that…

A study investigated the effects of suggestopedic accelerative learning and teaching (SALT) on the spelling achievement, attitudes toward school, and memory skills of fourth-grade students. Subjects were 20 male and 28 female students from two self-contained classrooms at Kennedy Elementary School in Rexburg, Idaho. The control classroom and the…

The Freedom from Distractability Index (FFD) on the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children- Third Edition (WISC-III) is an index score comprised of the sum of the scores on the Arithmetic and Digit Span subsets. Although the FFD is often interpreted as a measure of attention and concentration, there are a number of other possible explanations…

This study examined the effect of three aspects of the testing context--physical privacy, anonymity, and offers of help from a tester--on children's expectations. Performance of 96 11-year-old boys and girls on a pictorial recall memory task in a simulated test was evaluated. The subjects were divided into eight different groups varying on the…

In two experiments, visual and auditory memory were tested for good and for poor readers from the upper elementary grades. Under experimenter-blind conditions, no reading group differences existed for single-mode presentation in recognition frequency or recognition latency. With a multimodal presentation, latencies for poor readers were similar to…

This study examined the effects of the second level (intermediate acoustical processing of rhyming words) and the third level (deep-semantic processing of words in sentences) of the "levels of processing" framework on memory performance of four types of intermediate-grade students (52 "normal" students, 50 students with…

A traditional cued recall task and an item recognition priming paradigm were used to assess the locus of associative memory difficulties in learning-disabled children. Results for 24 learning-disabled and 24 nondisabled sixth graders are discussed within the explicit and implicit memory framework of P. Graf and D. L. Schacter (1985). (TJH)

The study examined the effects of questions on learning among 90 intermediate level educable mentally retarded children. Four types of learning were identified as relevant remembering, incidental remembering, relevant inferring, and incidental inferring. Results indicated that question position was an important variable in influencing the learning…

Number of stimulus items presented together (one, three or five) and instructions to organize were studied in a multitrial free recall experiment with 83 educable retarded adolescents. Results of individual sessions in which Ss were asked to recall 15 common words indicated that presentation of three stimuli together produced the highest…

A metacognitive model was proposed as an explanatory framework for spontaneous strategy use. A study in which hyperactive children transferred newly acquired strategies following self-control training and attributional retraining served as an illustration of how components in the model can be used to better understand "spontaneity." (Author/LMO)

The effectiveness of three strategy training methods was compared with 15 learning disabled (LD) children of two age groups (9 to 10 and 11 to 12 years old) and 15 nonLD children in the same age group. The methods (practice, in which the Ss were to find the best way to remember; specific strategy method, in which the Ss used a specific cumulative…

A study examined whether previous knowledge facilitates the acquisition of a reading comprehension strategy by children who are poor readers. Subjects, 54 fourth- and fifth-grade boys in Palm Beach County, Florida, who were poor readers and baseball experts, were trained in the use of a reading strategy (asking "why" questions), with…

Thirty grade 4 subjects were individually tested on a digit span test of working memory capacity (Case and Kurland) and the Reading Span Test (Daneman and Carpenter). The Reading Span Test was administered using sentences at a grade 2, grade 4, and grade 6 reading level. It was predicted that, as the decoding demands of the stimulus sentences in…

Individual differences in fourth grade students' abilities to profit from experimenter-provided picture adjunct aids on prose recall tasks were examined. It was hypothesized that poor paired associate learners would benefit from picture adjunct aids to a greater extent than good paired associate learners. A secondary aim was to assess the effects…

A study examined the efficacy of using various types of worksheets (representative of those typically used in instruction) that had been specifically designed to elicit differing achievement effects and to promote cognitive processing at the semantic level. Fifth grade students from five classrooms were divided into groups of high, middle, and low…