xv, 140 p. : ill. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number. / Although research on action processing indicates people segment action according to a partonomic goal hierarchy, no previous research has investigated whether memory for complex human action is actually organized in the mind with respect to goals. This dissertation explored the primary organization of action memory in adults and young children and explored the role of familiarity in young children's organization of action in memory. Borrowing from the text memory literature, a priming experiment was designed to investigate the degree to which action memory is organized with respect to goals versus veridical temporal structure. In all studies, participants viewed videos in which goals were carried out in an interleaved fashion, such that the execution of a goal was at times interrupted by action related to the other goal. In a first experiment with adults, the results indicated that adults reorganize action information in memory in order to emphasize goal structure relative to verbatim temporal structure. A second control experiment with adults clarified that the goal priming effect observed in the first experiment arose as a result of viewing the action scenario and was not simply due to the stimuli cuing pre-existing semantic memory. The results of a third experiment with adults revealed this process of goal organization is unlikely to be a by-product of goal-based linguistic encoding, but instead reflects encoding of human action itself. Young children's action memory was examined in a fourth experiment, and the role of children's familiarity with the action scenarios in action memory organization was also explored. Children did not display a significant tendency to organize action according to goal inferences (or temporal structure, either, for that matter). As well, children's prior familiarity with action did not modulate their memory organization to any significant degree. Overall, the results of this dissertation suggest that adult memory for action emphasizes goal inferences but cannot speak to how or when this process in achieved developmentally. These findings have implications for contemporary theories of action processing, point to commonalities in the processing of language and human action, and open the door to future research into the development of action memory organization. / Committee in charge: Dare Baldwin, Chairperson, Psychology; Marjorie Taylor, Member, Psychology; Ulrich Mayr, Member, Psychology; Eric Pederson, Outside Member, Linguistics

No description available.

Memory and metamemory were examined in 30 hyperactive and 30 nonhyperactive children matched on age, grade, and IQ (as measured by the Vocabulary and the Block Design subtests of the WISC-R), within the context of a broad range of tasks. The five tasks investigated in this study were: (a) a prospective memory task, (b) a feeling-of-knowing task, a visual retention task, (c) a word generation task, (d) and (e) an object span and recall task. Previous research has demonstrated considerable variability in the performance of hyperactive children on memory tasks. They have been shown to perform as well as normal children on tasks of cued recall, paired associates for meaningful words, and on tests of recognition memory. They are distinguished from normal children by their poor performance on tasks of uncued recall, paired associates learning for semantically unrelated words, and in addition, often display performance decrements when task demands increase. The results of this study suggest that hyperactive children are less efficient in metamemory knowledge and skills than normal children. These findings are consistent with the proposal that the difficulties hyperactive children demonstrate on memory tasks may result from a deficiency in their ability to efficiently engage in metamemory processes. The hyperactive children in this study generally had more difficulty than the control children with recall on all the tasks. These included tests of both verbal and nonverbal memory, short and long-term memory, and prospective remembering. Further, they did not derive a memorial benefit, as the control subjects did, when generating their own recall items, or when recalling visual stimuli that could be more easily verbally encoded than others. The hyperactive subjects demonstrated their recall abilities by performing as well as the normal subjects on the recall of read words in the word generation task, and on the recall of the low and medium level of labelability items in the visual retention task. Also, the recall performance of the hyperactive subjects differed significantly between a no-strategy and a provided strategy condition on the prospective memory task. Moreover, there were no group differences on the recognition memory test of the feeling-of-knowing task. The results of this study are consistent with the previous investigations of memory performance in hyperactive children. The present findings further extend the past research by demonstrating selective memory deficits in the hyperactive subjects that are consistent with deficits in metamemory abilities. The proposition that metamemory skills are implicated in the difficulties that the hyperactive children demonstrated in this study is further supported by the difficulty they experienced in describing how they remembered the task items. The hyperactive subjects had more difficulty than the control subjects when attempting to describe a strategy that they used to aid recall. The strategies they described, relative to the control subjects, tended to be vague and poorly defined. These findings suggest that there may be both qualitative and quantitative differences in the way in which hyperactive and normal children use strategies. In summary, the findings of this study suggest that hyperactive children, relative to normal children, seem to be deficient in both their metamemory knowledge and the ability to monitor and control their memory performance. Questions addressing whether these children cannot or do not employ these skills were introduced. The clinical implications of the findings were considered and recommendations were made for future research. / Arts, Faculty of / Psychology, Department of / Graduate

The effects of instruction integrating pictorial and textual components in a fifth and a seventh grade Social Studies lesson were investigated. Measures of recall were examined both immediately after the lesson and after a two week delay. Experimental instruction focusing on the integration of illustrations with the expository text was compared to the more conventional classroom procedure of focusing on the written text through guided silent reading. The fifth grade experimental group outperformed the conventional group on all measures of immediate and delayed recall. The seventh grade experimental group had higher scores than the conventional group on one delayed measure of recall, a short answer test. No particular reading ability level was benefited more than another by the experimental treatment in either grade. An examination of gender differences revealed that fifth grade females in the experimental group outscored males on one immediate measure of recall, a short answer test. Implications for instruction and further research are discussed. / Education, Faculty of / Language and Literacy Education (LLED), Department of / Graduate

The effects of timed readings on recall and comprehension in a child with Asperger's syndrome were examined by employing a multiple-baseline design across two books with reversals. Recall timings consisted of the student's free-say compilation of what she just read. Comprehension tests consisted of the participant's answers to predetermined questions after her recall period. No consequences or feedback was given during any of the conditions. Results indicate that, initially, as the time required to read decreased, the number of unrelated words during the recall period for the two books also decreased. Related words were not as affected. Scores on comprehension tests were high. There was, however, little correspondence between the participant's recall words and the main ideas answered correctly in the comprehension test.

Children who have received radiation therapy for the treatment of brain tumors have been shown to experience neurocognitive deficits which appear to increase over time. The purpose of this study was to examine the memory functioning of 22 children irradiated for brain tumor and 22 healthy children of the same age who had not received irradiation. Subjects were administered a brief form of the WISC-III, to obtain an IQ, and the Wide Range Assessment of Memory and Learning (WRAML), to evaluate visual and verbal memory. Results indicated that, although there were no significant differences between the IQ scores of healthy children and children who had been irradiated, children who have received radiation therapy for brain tumor evidence memory deficits which effect visual and verbal memory abilities. Among the children who had been irradiated, as time since treatment increased, visual memory and overall memory functioning appeared to decline. Findings also suggested that children who received total tumor resection may evidence greater memory deficits than those who received only a partial resection. Visual memory was more closely related to IQ in the children irradiated for brain tumor than in the healthy children. The overall importance of research with this population lies in refining the understanding of memory deficits and strengths in order to formulate more effective remediation compensation, strategies.

No description available.

This research was designed to explore autobiographical memory in children, specifically, the personal events involved in memory and memory failures and to what extent children and adults realize what they have forgotten. Since previous research in this domain has focused mainly on adult's or children's ability to recall past events, few have ventured to investigate what underlies the process of forgetting for everyday events in parents and children, and if a link exists between the two. Survey data pertaining to self-reported memory failures along with information on the amount of interaction between parents and children was collected from parents and children at a local elementary school. The results showed that children and parents were more likely to report failure in prospective memory (forgetting to do something) than retrospective memory (forgetting something they already knew). Additionally, when asked what they thought had caused the failure, children were more likely to attribute the lapse to external distractions. Finally, the data showed that the degree of parent-child interaction was significantly related to the detail provided in a child's reported memory failures. The results are discussed in the context of developing a better understanding of, and suggest future avenues for, research in memory and memory failures in children, as well as understanding the relation between parent/child memory.

The experiments in this thesis explored the development of executive function in 5- to 11-year-old children. Developmentally-appropriate versions of the task-switching paradigm, go/no-go task and self-ordered pointing test were used to measure shifting, inhibition and working memory respectively. These executive skills were examined independently and within-task experimental manipulations were used to explore both the executive and non-executive processes that influenced children’s performance. These allowed the investigation of not only when, but also how executive function develops. It was found that shifting development, as measured by the task-switching paradigm was highly influenced by the specific tasks switched between and the conflict created by the overlap of the tasks, as well as by previous task experience. Working memory for pictures was also influenced by previous experience and task difficulty, however the predicted relationship between memory for nameable objects and language ability was not found. Inhibition on the go/no-go paradigm appeared to be driven by an improvement in the efficiency of response inhibition enabling older children to inhibit a response at an earlier stage during the movement. Shifting, inhibition and working memory all showed developmental improvements during mid-childhood, demonstrating the protracted development of executive function. Shifting and working memory showed a similar pattern of development whereas inhibition reached a stable level of performance at an earlier age. There were no correlations between the three executive skills studied in this thesis, supporting the fractionation of executive function.

This investigation used a descriptive approach to explore and evaluate early recollection changes of children in Adlerian counseling. The study addressed seven research questions regarding early recollection change for children in Adlerian counseling as compared with children not in Adlerian counseling. The treatment group was engaged in Adlerian counseling for 10 weeks. The investigator conducted pre-counseling and post-counseling interviews to collect six total early recollections from 9 subjects. The comparison group was not engaged in treatment for counseling. The investigator conducted interviews at an interval of 10 weeks to collect six total early recollections from 9 subjects. The Manaster-Perryraan Manifest Content Early Recollection Scoring Manual was used for analysis of early recollection content. Following training sesions, raters scored absence or presence of content variables in early recollections. Tables were employed to reveal findings of early recollection content change as addressed by the seven research questions of this study. A descriptive evaluation of' the data indicated that the treatment group manifested greater change in early recollection content as compared to the comparison group in six of seven research questions. On the basis of these findings, this study concluded that early recollections of children are a valid source of potential in measuring therapeutic progress and are a reliable measure of the thematic apperception of children. The data from this study provide a foundation from which to build the clinical utility of the early recollections of children. In view of these results, this study recommended the routine use of early recollections of children in Adlerian counseling.