This study explored and demonstrated the effects of storytelling and pretend play on short-term and long-term narrative recall. Specifically, this study examined and identified the cognitive changes which underlay children's actions during pretense enactment and narration. Educators and researchers propose that play and storytelling emerge at the same time in a "stream of symbolization" as preschool and kindergarten children learn basic skills relevant to the narrative as a cognitive model of an event. Pretend play has long been considered an important area in the development of the child's growing cognitive and social competence. This study focused on the developmental differences between storytelling and pretend play, short-term and long-term memory, encoding and inferences and their interrelationships. According to the data, there were significant differences between storytelling and pretend play in facilitating narrative recall. The data also indicated that the ability to encode exceeded the ability to make inferences. The children were able to engage in storytelling and pretend play while at the same time they did not improve in their abilities to make inferences. This indicates that inferences required more complex cognitive skills, and was not related to the improvement of storytelling and pretend play. There was not a significant difference overall between the short- and long-term conditions. However, this study supports the hypothesis that storytelling and pretend play are affected by cognitive variables.

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Previous studies done on the correlation between specific curiosity and intelligence have been inconclusive. In the present study, a test of state specific curiosity and a test of intelligence were administered to 76 Ss from two introductory psychology courses. Three hypotheses were tested. These were, (a) that a significant specific curiosity-intelligence correlation would exist, (b) that the specific curiosity-verbal subscale correlation would be higher than the specific curiosity-abstraction sub-scale correlation, and (c) that there would be a sex difference in the specific curiosity-intelligence correlations. The data did not support hypothesis (a) or (b). However, they did support hypothesis (c). An inconsistent pattern of trends was discovered in the results which call the correlations into question. The suggestion was made that the study should be replicated.

Memory for crossed and nested classifications was investigated. Two experimental groups were exposed to stimuli which could be organized by both a crossed and nested classification. The stimuli consisted of nine drawings in a 3 x 3 matrix. Each drawing is characterized by attributes on five dimensions. The nested classification requires four dimensions to organize the nine drawings, while the crossed classification requires two dimensions. Of the five dimensions, three are unique to the nested classification, one is unique to the crossed classification, and one is common to both classifications. Subjects were presented the stimuli so that either the crossed or nested aspects were emphasized. This emphasis was accomplished by manipulating both the temporal order of rehearsal and the physical format, which were confounded in this experiment. Both nested and crossed groups first rehearsed the common dimension. The crossed group secondly rehearsed the other crossed dimension and thirdly the three nested dimensions. The nested group secondly rehearsed the three nested dimensions, then thirdly the crossed dimension. Also, the physical format for the two groups differed by having different lines separating the drawings of their sets. Three measures were taken during the recall of the sets. The temporal order of recall of the stimulus attributes was noted. Errors were counted when the attributes of any dimension were recalled in the wrong structural location, or were not recalled at all. Clustering was measured for each recall trial. Clustering is the tendency to recall all of one dimension, then all of another dimension, etc., rather than mix dimensions together. It was hypothesized (1) that subjects in the nested group would make fewer errors in the recall of the stimuli than would the crossed subjects; (2) that the crossed group would cluster in their recall to a greater extent than the nested group, and (3) that the two presentation methods would induce the subjects to record in long-term memory their respective structures better than the structure of the other group. Twenty four Portland State University undergraduates participated in the study. The error hypothesis (1) was not confirmed. For short-term memory, both groups made the same number of errors. The clustering hypothesis (2) was not confirmed. The induction of structure hypothesis (3) was partially confirmed. The nested group recalled the nesting with fewer errors than the cross. The crossed group recalled both structures equally poorly. A learning curve hypothesis (4) was not confirmed. A subject expectation effect hypothesis (5) was partially confirmed. Subjects in both groups increased their errors when they tried to rearrange the material in their memory in certain ways before recall. Several post-hoc analyses were performed. For short-term recall, errors were correlated with absolute rearrangement. Absolute rearrangement measures the difference between dimensional position in the presentation and recall sequences. The position change of the dimensions unique to the nested classification was found to correlate significantly with errors for both groups. The experimental hypotheses and post-hoc analyses are consistent with the hypothesis that the nested classification tends to override the cross classification when the two are in direct competition. Overall, the experimental results provide support for the hypothesis that the experimental procedure can induce the memory of nested classifications far better than the memory of cross classifications.

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The phenomenon in psycholinguistics known as structural priming happens, during language comprehension, when a prime sentence facilitates the processing speed of a target sentence, when both bear the same syntactic structure. In the present study, two specific passive constructions were investigated, the agentive by-phrase and the temporal by-phrase, to evaluate whether these structures primes each other or whether they prime themselves. On-line sentence processing measured by eye-tracking data in the form of duration of fixations within the AOIs (areas of interest) as well as fixation regressions to those AOIs corresponding to the prepositional by-phrases, the NP (det N), and the VP (aux V) respectively. The study yielded significant findings for priming of agentive targets with agentive primes and a failure to find priming in all other combinations of agentive and temporal prime and target conditions. The implications of these findings for an understanding of the mental representation of syntax of these constructions are discussed.

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