The extent to which an orienting activity exerts control over the encoding process was studied. Two experiments were reported in which associative meaningfulness was varied under conditions of semantic and nonsemantic processing. Both experiments showed effects of meaningfulness following both semantic and nonsemantic tasks. (Author/MH)

A study involving 18 adult signers with deafness and 26 hearing adults found that working memory for American Sign Language is sensitive to irrelevant signed input (and other structured visual input) in a manner similar to the effects of irrelevant auditory input on working memory for speech. (Contains references.) (CR)

A novel effect is reported in which serial recall of visual digits was disrupted to a greater degree by the presence of the same set of digits presented as an irrelevant auditory sequence than by the presence of irrelevant auditory consonants, but only when the order of the irrelevant digits was incongruent with that of the to-be-remembered digits…

Memory for scene changes that were identified immediately (passive encoding) or following systematic and effortful search (generative encoding) was compared across groups differing in age and intelligence. In the context of flicker methodology, generative search for the changing object involved selection and rejection of multiple potential…

Children's short-term memory was studied under two experimental conditions: one in which recall was expected to be facilitated because of the provision of a study period, and one in which a distracting task was imposed that was expected to interfere with recall. Forty subjects at each of two age levels, 7 and 11 years, were tested in a…

A study investigated changes in recognition time for short sentences presented on television screens of varying sizes with viewers at varying distances. In a posttest only control group design, subjects in several different groups viewed a series of similar sentences under conditions where screen size and distance from the screen were varied. The…

Eight, ten, and twelve year old children were tested on a novel procedure involving the successive presentation of standard and comparision stimuli. Two hypotheses were evaluated: one dealing with memory effects, and the other with children's pretesting of choice responses in spatial information processing. (Editor/RK)

Free recall lists were presented to young (N=42) and old (N=42) males under three conditions: (a) active auditory; (b) passive auditory; and (c) visual only. The young group recalled more words than the old at each presentation position under each condition. (Author)

The effects of training specific mnemonic skills on recall readiness were evaluated in educable retarded children. (BRT)

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)

Compares the performance of preschool and kindergarten children who were presented with 18 paired associates to learn under three conditions: control, mnemonic test-time instructions, and mnemonic plus retrieval instructions. Results are consistent with the claim that younger children need more explicit prompts. (RH)

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)

Normal and retarded adolescents recalled consonants after 0, 9, and 27 seconds of tonal detection and performed the detection task without recall. Subjects were classified as rehearsers or nonrehearsers, depending upon variations in tonal detection accuracy or response times across conditions. Normal and retarded nonrehearsers showed equal…