No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

This study was designed to explore the relationship between phonological processing, item and order memory, and reading achievement in second grade and adult readers. The literature consistently shows a deficit in phonological processing with poor readers. The results are mixed concerning memory for item and order information. A study by Katz, Healy, and Shankweiler (1983) attempted to show a relationship between phonological processing and memory for order information. The results indicated independent deficits for poor readers in both areas but failed to demonstrate a relationship.In this study subjects were required to look at a stimulus set of five letters for three seconds and remember them over a fifteen second delay. Following the delay the subject attempted to choose the initial array from the two presented to him. Reaction times and error rates were the dependent variables. Reading ability and age were independent variables.The results of this study do support a relationship between phonological processing and memory for order information through a three way interaction involving reading achievement, phonological processing, and memory type. Good reader's ability to phonologically process information is linked to their ability to remember order information. However causality was not determined.

This study has designed to test whether or not the use of metaphors affects audience recall and retention of news. The study is designed to test the hypotheses that metaphors help the reader recall a greater amount of information immediately after exposure (i.e., short-term memory, identified in this study as recall), and that metaphors aid in a greater amount of information retained at a later date (i.e., long-term memory, identified in this study as retention). Recall and retention help demonstrate whether or not metaphors promote reader understanding and remembering of facts in news stories better than in stories that do not use metaphors or images.The methodology of this study consisted of two tests in which subjects answered open-ended questions to see if the presence of metaphors aided in retention and recall of information. Two versions of a newspaper story with identical news were presented. The metaphor story contained one primary metaphorical image which ran continuously throughout the story. The nonmetaphor story featured no manipulation by the researcher. The first test measured the amount of information recalled immediately after exposure to a given story. The second test took place five days after the initial exposure.Using a MANOVA repeated measures design, the researcher found a difference between the metaphor and nonmetaphor variables and significant difference between the recall and retention variables, but no interaction between all of the independent variables. Therefore, this study did not support the hypothesis that news stories with metaphors aid in both recall (short-term memory) and retention (long-term memory) of information. / Department of Journalism

Retention on a short-term memory task and a subsequent final recall test were used to test implications of models of human memory. The type of retention interval activity was manipulated between-Ss and length of retention interval was manipulated within-Ss. Initial tests of recall revealed an inverse performance probability for the rehearsal-interference group as interval length increased. No effects of interval length were seen for a group given unrestricted rehearsal time. Retention levels for both groups were not significantly different on the final recall test. Implications of these results for general models of memory were presented.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of rehearsal in the short-term memory of visually-presented linguistic material in deaf students. An experimental approach was employed to determine if instruction in overt dactylic and articulatory rehearsal would make a difference in the short-term recall of verbal material. In addition, the study investigated the role of age in the development of short-term memory in deaf children.The subjects in the study were 87 prelingually deaf students at a state residential school for the deaf. The subjects were between the ages of 6-2 and 13-8 and were of at least low average non-verbal intelligence. Subjects were randomly assigned to one of three treatment conditions: (a) instruction in overt dactylic rehearsal, (b) instruction in overt articulatory rehearsal, or (c) no instruction in rehearsal.All subjects received treatment in groups of four to six for one session which lasted approximately 30 minutes. The task consisted of a 5-second exposure to two groups ofCVC trigrams followed by a 15-second rehearsal time. The subjects were then asked to record in writing their recall of the stimulus. Each group received five practice trials I followed by ten test trials. The dependent variable was the number of letters recalled correctly in the correct position.The results of the study were analyzed through multiple regression analysis with age as a covariate. While short-term recall was shown to correlate with age at the .001 level, there were no significant differences among the treatment groups. Consequently, the results of this investigation did not support the hypothesis that instruction in overt dactylic or articulatory rehearsal would significantly improve short-term recall of visually-presented verbal material in deaf students. Nor did the study indicate that the method of overt rehearsal employed would produce significantly different results.

Relapse is the single greatest barrier to recovery from addiction. Long-term memories for drug experience and associated contextual cues can provoke craving and resumption of drug use, particularly when a reminder of a highly charged context is encountered. In this thesis, three key questions related to the maintenance of long-term memory for drug-associated contexts are addressed: (1) Are Pavlovian conditioned associations between cocaine experience and the context in which it occurred maintained in long-term memory after extended periods of abstinence? (2) Are regions of the mesocorticolimbic circuitry, namely the nucleus accumbens and amygdala, differentially activated by retrieval of Pavlovian conditioned associations as time passes after cocaine experience? (3) Do neurons of the nucleus accumbens and amygdala show changes in dendritic architecture that reflect the impact of chronic cocaine exposure, which may underlie the maintenance of Pavlovian and/or instrumental drug-conditioned associations? Results confirm that Pavlovian conditioned memory for a cocaine-associated context is maintained in the long-term, becoming increasingly resilient over time. However, maintenance of these contextual associations is not accompanied by gross changes in dendritic architecture in neurons of the nucleus accumbens or amygdala within the timeframe examined. Nonetheless, these brain regions, along with the prefrontal cortex, are differentially activated by retrieval of Pavlovian conditioned associations after brief versus extended periods of abstinence. Together, these results emphasize a distinct contribution of Pavlovian memory processes, beyond instrumental and operant drug memory processes, in the long-term maintenance of addiction.

An independent S design employing a distractor-type task was used to investigate release from proactive inhibition (PI) as a function of intertrial interval (ITI) in short-term memory (STM). Of specific interest was whether PI release was provided by shift in ITI length rather than a function of lengthening the ITI. Four groups were employed in this study. One group received short ITIs for 4 trials and then a long ITI for the next 2 trials; another group shifted from a long to short ITI, and two additional groups received constant ITIs throughout. It was found that neither lengthening ITI nor a shift in ITI length provided a release from PI. Implications concerning time as an organizational (clustering) factor in final recall were not substantiated.