The study was designed to determine whether inferences about implied elements are drawn during sentence comprehension. A cued recall procedure was employed. It was argued, for example, that if one computes the use of a hammer when "the worker pounded the nail" is encountered, that "hammer" should effectively cue the recall of the sentence; while a…

This report reviews experimental techniques that have been used to assess sentence comprehension by preschool children and describes a new technique, word monitoring, which permits an assessment of the momentary demands made upon sentence-processing mechanisms as a child listens to a sentence. (The time it takes the child to push a button in…

Three experiments investigated the hypothesis that, when interpreted in context, general terms are typically encoded on the basis of an instantiation. The results indicated that a particular term naming the expected instantiation of a general term was a better cue for the recall of a sentence than the general term itself, even though the general…

Three experiments are reported regarding reaction time. Letter comparison time was found to increase when other irrelevant letters were present, regardless of whether or not the letters made up a word or a word-like configuration. Word comparison time was found to increase when distractors were similar to targets. (Author/RM)

Recent research within the framework of existential sociolinguistics is reviewed, and its implications for the interpretative processes of reading are discussed. It is argued that comprehension through language is based largely on the role that the assumptions of the speaker and the social expectations of the hearer play in symbolic interaction.…

Results of the experiment show that the generality or specificity of the verbal lable determines which of six versions of the drawings are accepted as formerly seen and which are not, and that the pattern of acceptance for the unlabeled parts corresponds to that of the labeled ones. (Author/RM)

Rote, repetitive Type I Rehearsal is defined as the continuous maintenance of information in memory using the minimum cognitive capacity necessary for maintenance. An analysis of errors made on a forced-choice recognition test supported the hypothesis that acoustic-phonemic components of the memory trace are added or strengthened by this…

Two experiments examined the effects of level of processing and uniqueness of encoding on the ability to recognize the nominal stimulus among either semantically similar or structurally similar distractor items. (Author/NCR)

Three experiments were conducted to extend the finding that, whereas phonemic coding is employed for short-term temporal order recall, coding of temporal-spatial patterns is employed for short-term spatial order recall. At least three types of coding strategies are available to subjects in short-term memory tasks. (CHK)

Report on a theory of articulation and communication of meaning, based on research by Piaget and Barbizet. Three steps are distinguished: discourse in Language X; the act of grasping the meaning outside the language of the discourse; and re-expression of the thought in Language Y. (Text is in French.) (AMH)

A theoretical explanation of the phenomenon of recognition failure and a presentation of seven experiments investigating performance. Recognition failure is reduced when a more stringent recognition criterion is used, essentially eliminated when the proper access test is used and significantly reduced when variability in recognition performance is…

A model is proposed in which information processing is accompanied by dynamic processes, including the reorganization of items into active patterns and their subsequent displacement. Research using category names and instances showed that reaction times decreased with each successive repetition under one condition, but longer latencies were…

This study examines the processes whereby new information is integrated with generalized world knowledge. (Author/RM)

This paper reports eight experiments with elementary school children and college students concerning the form class effect. Results confirmed several predictions regarding the effects on recall of enhanced organization between pairs of nouns by verb connectives versus conjunction connectives. (Author/JMB)

Assesses three papers in this volume, those by Wellman and Estes, Olson and Torrance, and Hall and Nagy, for their treatment of the following: (1) definition of semantic space, (2) defining children's processes of understanding that space, and (3) describing the contexts in which cognitive language is used. (AEW)