A possible contribution of word-retrieval difficulties to reading and spelling impairments

Good and poor readers at the junior high school level and good and poor spellers at the university level were compared on their ability to produce words in response to a semantic cue (a category name), a visual cue (three letters), and an auditory cue (a syllable rime). Kindergarten children were tested on a word-identification task and their retrieval of words in response to the semantic and auditory cues. At all ages, poor readers or spellers produced fewer words on all word-retrieval tasks than did good readers or spellers. Performance on the auditory and visual word-retrieval tasks correlated very highly with pseudoword reading and spelling ability in the two older groups; in the kindergarten children, auditory retrieval correlated with word identification. The results suggest that poor readers have not organized words in long-term memory according to rhyming families but that good readers have. We speculate that failure to retrieve rhyming words during acquisition of reading and spelling skills underlies the failure of poor readers and spellers to abstract the higher-order relationships between orthography and phonology.     

Effect of cues on object naming in first-grade good and poor readers

Object-naming deficits in children with reading problems may be due to deficiencies in either the phonological stage of processing or the semantic stage. The present study approached this issue by manipulating the type of cue given (semantic or phonetic) when object drawings were not named correctly by first-grade children. Although the children who were poor readers named significantly fewer objects than the good readers, both groups of children benefited from phonetic cues. In contrast, semantic cues had relatively little effect. These results support the view that difficulty on object naming is more likely related to phonological deficiencies.     

Coherence of retrieval cues,rather than additivity,determines prior cuing effectiveness in the rat

In previous studies, we have shown that adding a supplementary cue in a prior-cuing treatment may dramatically reduce its initial effectiveness. This series of experiments was aimed at testing the hypothesis that such a lack of additivity among retrieval cues could be due to the combined reactivation of memory attributes related to incompatible behavioral responses. For that purpose, rats were partially trained to reach the lighted arm (light condition; usual training condition) or the darkened arm (dark condition) of a Y-maze in order to avoid an electric foot-shock. The first experiment demonstrates that animals learned the two versions of the task similarly and that an exposure to the light similarly acts as an effective retrieval cue after a 24-h interval. In the second experiment, the effectiveness of exposure to the grid alone and to the light alone as well as to the combined light + grid cue was investigated after a 21-day training-to-test interval in the light condition, where light was related to safety and grid was associated with the shock, and in the dark condition, where both light and grid were related to the shock. The results indicate that whereas the compound light + grid cue was an ineffective retrieval cue in the light condition, it acted as an effective retrieval cue in the dark condition, supporting the hypothesis that coherence between retrieval cues is a necessary condition for effective cuing.     

Very young children's memory for the location of objects in a large-scale environment

2 experiments were carried out to investigate 18- to 30-month-old children's memory for the location of a hidden object. In the first experiment, young children were observed in 2 different memory-for-location tasks, both conducted in their own homes. In 1, a toy was hidden in a natural location, and in the other it was hidden in one of a set of boxes with picture cues on top of them. Memory performance was significantly better when the toy was hidden within the natural environment. The effect of different types of hiding locations was examined further in the second experiment. No age differences were found when an object was hidden either in the natural environment or in 1 of a set of unmarked boxes (although performance was better in the former condition). However, in the third condition the older subjects (24-30 months) effectively used a landmark cue (a nearby piece of furniture) to help them remember in which plain box a toy had been hidden, but the young subjects (18-22 months) did not profit from such potential cues. The results, as well as some previous research with delayed-response tasks, were interpreted as reflecting developmental changes in very young children's ability to exploit available cues. The pattern of results suggested the possibility that 2-year-old children are capable of a simple form of mnemonic strategy, actively associating an available cue with the information to be remembered.     

The Effect of Two-dimensional and Stereoscopic Presentation on Middle School Students’ Performance of Spatial Cognition Tasks

We investigated whether and how student performance on three types of spatial cognition tasks differs when worked with two-dimensional or stereoscopic representations. We recruited nineteen middle school students visiting a planetarium in a large Midwestern American city and analyzed their performance on a series of spatial cognition tasks in terms of response accuracy and task completion time. Results show that response accuracy did not differ between the two types of representations while task completion time was significantly greater with the stereoscopic representations. The completion time increased as the number of mental manipulations of 3D objects increased in the tasks. Post-interviews provide evidence that some students continued to think of stereoscopic representations as two-dimensional. Based on cognitive load and cue theories, we interpret that, in the absence of pictorial depth cues, students may need more time to be familiar with stereoscopic representations for optimal performance. In light of these results, we discuss potential uses of stereoscopic representations for science learning.     

Responsiveness of Nigerian students to pictorial depth cues

Because research has indicated that many students in the developing countries find it hard to understand depth portrayal in Western pictures, the authors tested three groups of Nigerian high school and college students for response to four pictorial depth cues. Their tests, which used ball-and-rod models originally devised for teaching chemistry, showed no one cue to be effective with all students. The students had more difficulty with cues concerning the relative size of objects and the fore-shortening of straight lines than with cues involving overlap of lines and distortion of the angles between lines. This study was conducted within a link scheme between the University of Lagos and the University of East Anglia. The authors thank the Inter-University Council for Higher Education Overseas, sponsor of the scheme, and the University of Lagos for their kind and generous assistance.     

The development of word retrieval abilities in the second year and its relation to early vocabulary growth

The present research investigated the development of word retrieval abilities late in the second year when most children display a marked increase in word production. When asked what was hidden in a given box, children with still quite limited productive vocabularies were reliably less likely to produce the labels of the hidden objects than were children with larger productive vocabularies even though (1) all children could name those objects and (2) all children did well when asked to find those same hidden objects. Additionally, the provision of pictorial cues facilitated word retrieval, especially in the early stage of lexical development. Naming errors during a naturalistic book-reading session peaked in children whose productive vocabularies had recently begun to expand, further suggesting that word retrieval processes undergo significant changes at this time.     

Localizing the development of ability differences in organized memory

Although it is well know that learning disabled children tend to perform more poorly than normally achieving children on most memory tasks, the basis of this poor performance remains unclear. Recently, evidence has been accumulating which suggests that disabled children have difficulty with the basic processes of storage and retrieval. The purpose of the present research was to investigate this hypothesis using a recently developed model of memory that provides a factoring procedure for measuring storage and retrieval processes. In particular, we were interested in localizing the source of the development of ability differences in organized recall in early (grade 2) and later (grade 6) elementary school. All of the 600 children who participated had measured IQs in the 97–107 range; however, the disabled students were at least 1 year behind in either reading or arithmetic but not both. All of the children learned a 16-item list that was either unrelated or categorized using either a free or cued recall procedure. The results indicated that while ability differences were present at storage and retrieval, differences tended to be larger at retrieval than at storage, on categorized rather than on uncategorized lists, and in the cued rather than in the free recall conditions. These results illustrate that the ability to execute purposive components of retrieval develops more slowly in disabled than in nondisabled children. Consequently, it is these processes that should be the primary target in remedial memory programs.     

Inferring False Beliefs from Actions and Reactions

Current evidence suggests that young children have little understanding of false belief. Standard false belief tasks, however, may underestimate children's ability for 2 reasons. First, the only cue to belief in these tasks is a protagonist's lack of perceptual access to some critical event, and this may not be a very salient cue for young children. Second, the standard tasks require children to make forward-looking predictions from the causes of a belief (e.g., from what a protagonist has or has not perceived) to either the protagonist's belief or the protagonist's action, and children may not be very skilled at making such predictions. In 2 experiments we investigated whether 3-year-olds would do better on tasks in which the belief cues were stronger, and in which they could reason backward to the belief from its effects (e.g., from a protagonist's actions and reactions). Even on these easy tasks, however, they did not perform well. These findings provide strong support for the view that children of this age do not fully understand the representational nature of belief.     

How temporal and spatial aspects of presenting visualizations affect learning about locomotion patterns

Two studies investigated the effectiveness of dynamic and static visualizations for a perceptual learning task (locomotion pattern classification). In Study 1, seventy-five students viewed either dynamic, static-sequential, or static-simultaneous visualizations. For tasks of intermediate difficulty, dynamic visualizations led to better classification performance than static-sequential visualizations, but not than static-simultaneous visualizations. To test whether the temporal aspects of presenting static-simultaneous visualizations (i.e., their permanent visibility) or their spatial aspects (i.e., their arrangement in rows) accounted for this effect, Study 2 investigated three additional static-simultaneous conditions. Seventy-five students viewed static-simultaneous visualizations presented either in columns, matrices, or circles. For tasks of intermediate difficulty dynamic visualizations outperformed pictures presented in columns, matrices, and circles, but not the rows format. Accordingly, for learning about locomotion patterns, dynamic visualizations are better suited than most, but not all static visualization formats. From a practical point of view, effort should be invested into the design of static-simultaneous visualizations to further optimize instructional materials.     

Epistemic states and traits: preschoolers appreciate the differential informativeness of situation-specific and person-specific cues to knowledge

Previous research has demonstrated that preschoolers can use situation-specific (e.g., visual access) and person-specific (e.g., prior accuracy) cues to infer what others know. The present studies investigated whether 4- and 5-year-olds appreciate the differential informativeness of these types of cues. In Experiment 1 (N = 50), children used others' prior labeling accuracy as a cue when learning labels for, but not the visual identity of, hidden objects. In Experiment 2 (N = 64), with both cues present, children attended more to visual access than prior accuracy when learning the visual identity of, but not labels for, hidden objects. These findings demonstrate that children appreciate the difference between situation- and person-specific cues and flexibly evaluate these cues depending on what information they are seeking.     

The influences of guiding cues on motor skill autonomy in rats

How does the effectiveness of guiding cues influence the development of motor skill autonomy? We utilized two sets of guiding cues (lights vs. reversed-lights conditions) that differed in their effectiveness to control a left–right leverpress sequence in rats. We separately measured the development of stimulus control by panel lights on guiding-cues trials and the development of stimulus control by practice cues on no-cue probe trials within the same sessions. Accuracy in the presence of the guiding cues was acquired faster in the lights condition than in the reversed-lights condition, but subjects in the reversed-lights condition were more able to complete the skill autonomously than those in the lights condition. Throughout acquisition, control by guiding cues and practice cues developed at the same rate in the reversed-lights condition, but control by practice cues (autonomy) developed at a slower rate than did control by guiding cues in the lights condition. At the end of training, subjects that had been exposed to the reversed-lights condition displayed higher levels of autonomy than did those exposed to the lights condition. The less effective guiding cue (reversed-lights) produced greater levels of autonomy than did the more effective cue (lights), even though control by this guiding cue developed more slowly. Thus, guiding your child by the hand too much may reduce his or her ability to complete the task independently. We discuss the similarity to prompt dependence in children with learning disabilities and transfer of stimulus control.     

Categorization and Naming: Basic-Level Sorting in Eighteen-Month-Olds and Its Relation to Language

2 studies investigate whether 18-month-old children spontaneously sort objects into basic-level categories, and how this ability is related to naming. In Study 1, 18-month-old children were given spontaneous sorting tasks, involving both identical objects and objects with basic-level intracategory variation. Children were scored as having passed the tasks if they produced "exhaustive grouping," that is, physically grouped all the objects of one kind into one location and the objects of the other kind into a different location. The children also received means-ends and object-permanence tasks. Children's parents received a checklist of early names. Children who produced exhaustive grouping used significantly more names than those who did not, in both identical and basic-level cases. There was no such relation between object-permanence and naming or between means-ends performance and naming. In Study 2, children received arrays of the same objects, with either identical objects or objects with basic-level variation in each group. No significant differences were found between the identical and basic-level tasks. However, as in the previous task, performance on both types of categorization was related to naming. Children who produced exhaustive grouping were reported to produce more names than those who did not. There appears to be a close relation between object categorization and naming in young children. The theoretical implications of this empirical association are discussed.     

Categorization and memory retrieval by three-month-olds

84 3-month-olds were tested in 3 studies of the acquisition and long-term retention of category-specific information. Infants who were trained with a perceptibly different member of an alphanumeric category on each of 3 days generalized responding to a novel instance of the original training category but not a novel member of a novel category during a 24-hour novelty test. 2 weeks later, when infants displayed no evidence of remembering their prior training experience, categorization was reinstated if a novel exemplar from the original training category was used as the retrieval cue in a memory reactivation procedure. A novel exemplar from a novel category was not an effective retrieval cue. The effectiveness of the category-specific retrieval cue was a function of its physical similarity to the individual exemplars encountered during training, not testing. The background against which the alphanumeric exemplars were displayed during training was not an effective retrieval cue in either the 24-hour novelty test or the memory reactivation procedure, indicating that all invariant stimulus attributes do not contribute equally as category cues. These data are the first to document retention of category-specific information after extended intervals. A popular account of categorization holds that infants abstract invariant features from individual exemplars and form a schema or distinctive memory representation of these shared features against which subsequent exemplars are compared. The present data provide support for a more parsimonious account of categorization, based on the retrieval of information about individual exemplars, that does not require an assumption of prototype formation.     

Communication competence in reading and learning disabilities

Conclusion The evidence indicates that learning-disabled children show pervasive and enduring language problems across a wide variety of language tasks. The studies suggest that the problems experienced by learning and reading-disabled children may fall into the categories of phonology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics as well as nonverbal communication. In terms of nonverbal communication, these children are less accurate in interpreting nonverbal auditory and visual cues. In phonology, it appears that they are less skilled in detecting the segments of single words and thus have difficulty establishing phoneme to grapheme correspondence. In the area of syntax, learning-disabled males are less skilled in dealing with inflection and the comprehension and creation of complex sentences. In semantics, they are less adequate than nondisabled children in defining words, creating sentences, and classifying objects into categories. They show less adequate sentence production, are less skilled at recognizing their errors, and are significantly slower in generating verbal responses. Finally, there is one study that suggests that learning-disabled children may be discriminated by their use of language in social situations. This paper was presented at the 29th Annual Conference of The Orton Society at Minneapolis, November, 1978.     

Timing in retroactive interference

Retroactive interference is conventionally viewed as attenuated retrieval of a target association due to the training of a second association between training and testing of the target association. In three experiments in which water-deprived rats were used as subjects, we manipulated the durations of the time between cue termination and outcome onset (Experiment 1), the durations of the target and the interfering cues (Experiment 2), and the durations of the outcome used during target and interfering training (Experiment 3). Greater interference was consistently observed between associations bearing a high degree of similarity in their temporal structure, which suggests that interference occurs between complex representations that encode not only the physical attributes of the stimuli, but also their temporal characteristics.     

The birth of words: ten-month-olds learn words through perceptual salience

A core task in language acquisition is mapping words onto objects, actions, and events. Two studies investigated how children learn to map novel labels onto novel objects. Study 1 investigated whether 10-month-olds use both perceptual and social cues to learn a word. Study 2, a control study, tested whether infants paired the label with a particular spatial location rather than to an object. Results show that 10-month-olds can learn new labels and do so by relying on the perceptual salience of an object instead of social cues provided by a speaker. This is in direct contrast to the way in which older children (12-, 18-, and 24-month-olds) learn and extend new object names.     

Memory for everyday information in students with learning disabilities

This study compared students with and without learning disabilities (LD) on their recall of academic information and information encountered in the students' everyday lives. The academic recall measures included a sentence listening span test, a rhyming words working memory test, and a visual matrix working memory task. Students' cued recall of all the tasks was also measured. The everyday working memory tasks included a dance episode event recall test; a library procedure recall test; and recall tests of commonly found objects, such as a coin, a telephone, and a McDonald's sign. Compared to students without LD, students with LD performed poorly on both the academic recall tasks and the everyday recall tasks. These results support the notion that some students with LD may have working memory problems that affect their performance on tasks other than reading. The results of the cued recall showed that the availability of cues significantly decreased the ability group differences on many of the academic and everyday tasks. This result replicates prior research findings that students with LD do not use retrieval strategies effectively and that some students with LD may have a production deficiency that affects their retrieval of previously encoded information.     

A comparison between elemental and compound training of cues in retrospective revaluation

Associative learning theories assume that cue interaction and, specifically, retrospective revaluation occur only when the target cue is previously trained in compound with the to-be-revalued cue. However, there are recent demonstrations of retrospective revaluation in the absence of compound training (e.g., Matute &; Pineño, 1998a, 1998b). Nevertheless, it seems reasonable to assume that cue interaction should be stronger when the cues are trained together than when they are trained apart. In two experiments with humans, we directly compared compound and elemental training of cues. The results showed that retrospective revaluation in the elemental condition can be as strong as and, sometimes, stronger than that in the compound condition. This suggests that within-compound associations are not necessary for retrospective revaluation to occur and that these effects can possibly be best understood in the framework of general interference theory.