The basic deficits underlying the severe and persistent reading difficulties in dyslexia are still highly debated. One of the major topics of debate is whether these deficits are language specific, or affect both verbal and non-verbal stimuli. Recently, Ahissar and colleagues proposed the "anchoring-deficit hypothesis" (Ahissar, Lubin,…

This study examined reading performance of 102 Chinese Mandarin-speaking 4th graders in their second language (L2, English) as a function of performance in their first language (L1, Chinese). The results revealed that for Rapid Automatized Naming (RAN) and Rapid Alternating Stimulus (RAS) measures, the mean naming time decreased monotonically in…

The ability to make inferences for the purposes of comprehension is considered an important factor in pragmatic ability. In this experimental group study with stroke patients, the ability to make inferences and its associations with sustained attention and verbal working memory were explored. A group of 14 left-hemisphere-damaged individuals had…

The aims of this study were (1) to assess the relative effectiveness of verbal and visual elaboration prompts and question-answering prompts on children's incidental memory, and (2) to determine whether performance improvement associated with pictorial elaboration could be augmented by either verbal elaboration or question-answering procedures.…

A stages-of-learning model was used to examine effects of picture-word manipulation on storage and retrieval differences between disabled and nondisabled grade 2 and 6 children. Results showed that disabled students are poorer at memory tasks and in developing the ability to reliably retrieve information than nondisabled children. (Author/RH)

Semantic theory, its relationship to comprehension, the nature and function of semantic memory, and results of some research on semantic memory and bilinguals are discussed through a review of recent literature. The findings discussed seem to confirm these general observations regarding semantic memory and bilinguals: (1) there is integration and…

This paper reports three experiments concerning methodological issues in studies on incidental learning performance which use verbal and nonverbal procedures and which appear to be hampered by differences in stimulus materials, learning opportunities, and dependent measures. The first study, using 128 children from grades 3, 5, 7, and 9, attempted…

To determine whether different long-term memory representations are necessary for verbal and visual material, subjects studied faces composed of visual features or verbal facts composed of concepts. Findings showed interference between verbal and pictorial information, and supported the ACT theory that pictorial and verbal materials are stored…

Four experiments were carried out to examine the different recall strategies employed in a diagnostic test of visual sequential memory. The principal implication of the results is that good and poor readers may not differ with respect to visual memory but in their ability to employ a verbal labeling strategy. (Author/KC)

Two studies were conducted with English speakers to investigate (1) the facilitative effects of melodic features of speech, and (2) whether poor readers (without evidence of sensory defect) show a greater impairment than good readers when melodic features are made unavailable in the speech input. It was hypothesized that when melodic cues are not…

A total of 102 children (17 from each of the kindergarten, first, and second grades and of two disparate socioeconomic backgrounds) were administered a series of tasks involving verbal recall. The purpose of this testing was to compare the verbal recall ability of children of different ages and socioeconomic status. The verbal material was read to…