Three experiments examined the immediate free recall (IFR) of auditory-verbal and visuospatial materials from single-modality and dual-modality lists. In Experiment 1, we presented participants with between 1 and 16 spoken words, with between 1 and 16 visuospatial dot locations, or with between 1 and 16 words "and" dots with synchronized…

Does spreading activation from incidentally encountered hints cause incubation effects? We used Remote Associates Test (RAT) problems to examine effects of incidental clues on impasse resolution. When solution words were seen incidentally 3-sec before initially unsolved problems were retested, more problems were resolved (Experiment 1). When…

The authors revisited evidence in favor of modularity and of functional equivalence between the processing of verbal and spatial information in short-term memory. This was done by investigating the patterns of intrusions, omissions, transpositions, and fill-ins in verbal and spatial serial recall and order reconstruction tasks under control,…

The present experiment was designed to distinquish between verbal and nonverbal encoding of sequentially presented spatial information. (Author)

Males and females from grades 3, 6 and college viewed sets of five or seven letters in a 4x4 matrix and remembered either names of the letters, positions of the letters within the matrix or both letters and positions. At all grade levels females remembered letters better than positions, males did equally well on both. (MS)

Six experiments investigated loss of availability of surface form in sentence comprehension. Explanations for the loss included: (1) linguistic hypothesis; (2) memory limitations hypothesis; (3) integration hypothesis; and (4) processing shift hypothesis. (LMO)

In two experiments, children ages six through eight, 10-year-old children, and college students were shown several series of slides. Each series told a unique "story" and was followed by oral questions. Results illustrated the increasing interdependence of the verbal and visual systems with age. (Author/MP)

Children and adults were more likely to claim a word was presented as a picture than vice versa. Results indicated the absence of developmental differences in reality monitoring and similarity in representational processes of children and adults. (BC)

Previous studies of the effect of age and modality on digit span task performance have yielded inconsistent results. To eliminate some of the methodological difficulties in prior research, 18 college students and 18 older adults were given the digit span task by means of three different modalities: (1) visual successive; (2) visual simultaneous;…

Thirty college undergraduates participated in a study of the effects of acoustic and visual interference on the recall of word and picture triads in both short-term and long-term memory. The subjects were presented 24 triads of monosyllabic nouns representing all of the possible combinations of presentation types: pictures, printed words, and…

The value of verbal labeling is shown by a study of fourth-grade, eighth-grade, and college students who were shown pictures accompanied by short verbal descriptions. Verbal descriptions increased correct recognitions and rejections of unrelated distractors, while increasing false recognition of related distractors. Results were consistent for all…

Two experiments, designed to examine the developmental changes in the modification of visual memory by verbal information, are described in this paper. In both experiments, first, third, and fifth grade children and college students were shown slides of short episodes followed by oral questions. Questions either described or did not describe…

A research project involving 16 experiments investigated the nature of the encoding process for verbal materials, particularly differences arising from mode of presentation. The results showed that a change in mode of presentation of items produced a recovery from interference in short term retention. Since intermodal interference was lower than…