How verbal information is processed and recalled appears to be influenced by the structure of the information presented (e.g., unrelated sentences vs. narratives) and the processes the listener uses to encode the information (e.g., verbatim encoding vs. gist extraction). Twenty adults, half with a history of learning disabilities (HLD) and half…

Aspects of the processing of frequency information were investigated in two studies. The first showed that second graders were as prepared to process frequency differences as adults. The second showed that practice at frequency counting does not improve the performance of young adults and neither does feedback regarding earlier performance.…

Reports on 5 experiments investigating the effect of blocking words according to semantic category on ordered recall in adults and young children. (Author/RM)

Reviews and discusses experimental and observational research on the function of the social environment of the child in the mastery of syntactic regularities during language acquisition. Theories based on modeling, imitation, and reinforcement are addressed. A 73-item reference list accompanies the text. (Author/JL)

Tested the hypothesis that individual differences in immediate-verbal-memory span predict success in second-language vocabulary acquisition. In the two-session study, adult subjects learned 56 English-Finnish translations. Tested one week later, subjects were less likely to remember those words they had difficulty learning, even though they had…