In almost all daily activities fingers of both hands are used in coordinated succession. The present experiments explored whether learning in such tasks pertains not only to the overall sequence spanning both hands but also to the constituent sequences of each hand. In a serial reaction time task, 2 repeating hand-related sequences were…

The purpose of the present study was to synthesize research that compares children with and without reading disabilities (RD) on measures of short-term memory (STM) and working memory (WM). Across a broad age, reading, and IQ range, 578 effect sizes (ESs) were computed, yielding a mean ES across studies of -0.89 (SD = 1.03). A total of 257 ESs…

Three hypotheses of forgetting from immediate memory were tested: time-based decay, decreasing temporal distinctiveness, and interference. The hypotheses were represented by 3 models of serial recall: the primacy model, the SIMPLE (scale-independent memory, perception, and learning) model, and the SOB (serial order in a box) model, respectively.…

How does the brain carry out working memory storage, categorization, and voluntary performance of event sequences? The LIST PARSE neural model proposes an answer that unifies the explanation of cognitive, neurophysiological, and anatomical data. It quantitatively simulates human cognitive data about immediate serial recall and free recall, and…

Reply to comments on an article "Issues With the SIMPLE Model: Comment on Brown, Neath, and Chater" (2007) by Bennet Murdock on the current authors' original article "A temporal ratio model of memory" by Brown, Neath, and Chater. Does a single mechanism underpin serial and free recall? B. Murdock (2008) argued against the claim, embodied in the…

Knowledge of sequential relationships enables future events to be anticipated and processed efficiently. Research with the serial reaction time task (SRTT) has shown that sequence learning often occurs implicitly without effort or awareness. Here, the authors report 4 experiments that use a triplet-learning task (TLT) to investigate sequence…

The hypothesis that performance on implicit learning tasks is unrelated to psychometric intelligence was examined in a sample of 605 German pupils. Performance in artificial grammar learning, process control, and serial learning did not correlate with various measures of intelligence when participants were given standard implicit instructions.…

Nonhuman animals, like humans, appear sensitive to the structure of the elements of sequences, perhaps even when the structure relates nonadjacent elements. In the present study, we examined the contribution of chunking, rule learning, and item memory when rats learned serial patterns composed of two interleaved subpatterns. In one group, the…

In 3 experiments, the authors investigated the effects of to-be-remembered (TBR) and intervening list length on free recall to determine whether selective rehearsal could explain the previous finding that recall was affected only by TBR list length. In Experiments 1 (covert rehearsal) and 2 (overt rehearsal), participants saw 5- and 20-word lists…

Background: In the last few years, experimental data have been reported on differences in implicit memory processes of genetically distinct groups of individuals with Intellectual Disability (ID). These evidences are relevant for the more general debate on supposed asynchrony of cognitive maturation in children with abnormal brain development.…

In a previous study, it was shown that the attentional blink (AB)--the failure to recall the 2nd of 2 visual targets (T1 and T2) presented within 500 ms in rapid serial visual presentation--is reduced when T2 is preceded by a distractor that shares a feature with T2 (e.g., color; Nieuwenstein, Chun, van der Lubbe & Hooge, 2005). Here, this cuing…

Good phrasing (slight variations in inter-stimulus time) aids serial learning by dividing the serial pattern into appropriate parts. (AN)