Recall performance in working memory (WM) is strongly affected by the similarity between items. When asked to encode and recall list of items in their serial order, people confuse more often the position of similar compared to dissimilar items. Models of WM explain this deleterious effect of similarity through a problem of discriminability between…

Recently, several studies have suggested that metacognition emerges early in infancy and toddlerhood. However, to date, the developmental trajectory of these early metacognitive monitoring and control processes and their influence on children's later memory functioning remains poorly understood. The aim of this study was to longitudinally document…

Long-term memory knowledge is considered to impact short-term maintenance of item information in working memory, as opposed to short-term maintenance of serial order information. Evidence supporting an impact of semantic knowledge on serial order maintenance remains weak. In the present study, we demonstrate that semantic knowledge can impact the…

This study starts from the observation that current empirical research on students' processing strategies in higher education has mainly focused on the use of self-report instruments to measure students' general preferences towards processing strategies. In contrast, there is a rather limited use of more direct and online observation techniques to…

The ability to mentally simulate possible futures ("episodic future thinking") is of fundamental importance for various aspects of human cognition and behavior, but precisely how humans construct mental representations of future events is still essentially unknown. We suggest that episodic future thoughts consist of transitory patterns…

Experiment 1 showed that four-year-old children memorized a list of non-rhyming items better than a list of rhyming ones. In Experiment 2, bilingual children learned a list of items which had rhyming names in one language and non-rhyming names in the other. Results showed better performance on the non-rhyming items. (JMB)

The type of ordering criteria which students use to organize conceptual information was investigated. It was concluded that the ordering criteria reflected knowledge of a specific domain and were a function of developmental level. This information can be used by teachers as a basis for grouping. (Author/MH)