C. L. Gagn? and E. J. Shoben (1997) proposed that concepts are combined via external relations and that lexical entries include information about which relations are frequent for every modifying noun. As evidence for this view, they showed that relations associated with the modifier affected the interpretation of combinations in several studies in…

The author examined memory for text in terms of the independent influences of semantic knowledge associations and text organization. Semantic associations were operationalized as the semantic relatedness between individual text concepts and the text as a whole and assessed with latent semantic analysis. The author assessed text organization by…

The study examines the relationship between second language (L2) passage comprehension and intake (form recognition), gain (meaning recognition and production), and retention of new lexical items from the passages. The effect of topic familiarity on the above relationships is also examined. Participants were a cross-sectional sample of L2…

The debate among scholars and gay activists and religious/political activists about the appropriateness and efficacy of conversion therapy has left out a number of individuals for whom neither gay-affirmative nor conversion therapy may be indicated. The present discussion, through the use of case material, offers considerations for the…

This investigation was undertaken to address questions about topic familiarity and disfluencies during oral descriptive discourse of adult speakers. Participants expressed more attributes when the topic was familiar than when it was unfamiliar. Fillers and lexical pauses were the most frequent disfluencies. The mean duration of each hesitation…

By integrating previous computational models of corticohippocampal function, the authors develop and test a unified theory of the neural substrates of familiarity, recollection, and classical conditioning. This approach integrates models from 2 traditions of hippocampal modeling, those of episodic memory and incremental learning, by drawing on an…

Author presents observations related to college students' informal manner of addressing authors when writing critically about literary works composed in the first person. Topics analyzed include students' relationship with the author depending on the literary work, and students' familiarity when addressing their elders and authority figures in the…

At the international Youth Employment Summit, September 7-11, 2002, representatives from 140 countries gathered in Alexandria, Egypt to share knowledge and experience and to advance the cause of better preparation of youth for entry into, and success in, their respective national economies. At the Summit, for the benefit of those with little…

Does recognition memory rely on discrete recollection, continuous evidence, or both? Is continuous evidence sensitive to only the recency and duration of study (familiarity), or is it also sensitive to details of the study episode? Dual process theories assume recognition is based on recollection and familiarity, with only recollection providing…

Conjunction errors occur when participants incorrectly identify as "old" novel test stimuli created by recombining parts of two study stimuli (parent items). Prior studies have reported that the conjunction error rate is higher when parent items are studied together than when they are studied apart (a parent proximity effect). In several…

Script analysis as a test of executive functions is presumed sensitive to cognitive changes seen with increasing age. Two studies evaluated if gender differences exist in performance on scripts for familiar and unfamiliar tasks in groups of cognitively intact older adults. In Study 1, 26 older adults completed male and female stereotypical…

This narrative inquiry sought to explore the views of eight young New Zealanders, aged nine to 14 years, who had experienced specific difficulties with learning. Narrative research procedures were used to gather and interpret the stories the young participants told about their experiences. Findings revealed that young people become aware of their…

This study investigated the role of concurrent musical parts in pitching ability in sight-singing, concentrating on the effects of melodic and harmonic coherence. Twenty-two experienced singers sang their part twice in each of four novel chorales. The chorales contained either original or altered melody and original (tonal) or altered (atonal)…

This article explores the influence of prior knowledge on the setting of goals and use of content in museum website visits. Goal setting is a crucial process in organizing the activities of surfers in open environments, such as museum websites, where surfers faced ill-defined tasks. To this end, 12 graduate students were asked to surf through two…

This paper provides three representative examples that highlight the ways in which procedures can be combined to study interactions across traditional domains of study: segmentation, word learning, and grammar. The first section uses visual familiarization prior to the Headturn Preference Procedure to demonstrate that synchronized visual…