The Development of Clustering in Episodic Memory: A Cognitive-Modeling Approach

Younger children’s free recall from episodic memory is typically less organized than recall by older children. To investigate if and how repeated learning opportunities help children use organizational strategies that improve recall, the authors analyzed category clustering across four study-test cycles. Seven-year-olds, 10-year-olds, and young adults (N = 150) studied categorically related words for a free-recall task. The cognitive processes underlying recall and clustering were measured with a multinomial model. The modeling revealed that developmental differences emerged particularly in the rate of learning to encode words as categorical clusters. The learning curves showed a common pattern across age groups, indicating developmental invariance. Memory for individual items also contributed to developmental differences and was the only factor driving 7-year-olds’ moderate improvements in recall.     

The influence of instruction on verbatim and content text recall

This investigation focuses on text recall in eight‐ and nine‐year old children. The main focus was on whether two different sets of instructions had a differential influence: one set instructed students to focus on an orally presented text verbatim, and the other instructed students to focus on its content. A differential influence on verbatim and content recall might indicate separate storage of verbatim and gist information, and could provide evidence for two subprocesses of text processing – that is, for construction and integration. The instructions were administered either before or after hearing the text, and recall was tested again one week later. The results showed differential instruction effects on verbatim and content recall. These effects depended on the time of instruction. Verbatim instruction had an enhancing effect on verbatim recall, both when instructions were given before and when given after text presentation. Content instruction given after text presentation had a suppressing effect on verbatim recall, but involved no advantage for content recall. Content recall was not suppressed by verbatim instruction at any time of instruction. Thus, the processing of content seems to be less situated than the processing of verbatim information.     

Bedeutung der familialen Lebenswelt für die Gesundheit von Kindern und Jugendlichen

Family is the central place of socialization during childhood and adolescence. What are the determining factors of family life that are important for the health of children and adolescents and in which stages of their life do these factors take effect? The question is answered with reference to the general health of children and adolescents as rated by their parents. The analysis is conducted with data from the KiGGS study 2003–2006 which is representative of Germany (n?=?17641, age: 0–17 years). The gender-specific effects of different family factors on good health are analysed in five age groups using binary logistic regression analysis including structural, socioeconomic and origin-related factors of family as well as housing conditions and family cohesion. Bivariate analysis indicates significant effects on general health for almost all included factors (at least in some age groups). Multivariate analysis shows family cohesion to be the most important factor for good health. In boys a bilateral migration background also has an adverse effect on good general health until the beginning of adolescence.     

Family background, entry selectivity and opportunities to learn: What matters in primary teacher education? An international comparison of fifteen countries

First findings of IEA’s “Teacher Education and Development Study in Mathematics (TEDS-M)” had revealed differences in the demographic background, opportunities to learn (OTL), and outcomes of teacher education between student teachers from different countries. Two hypotheses are examined: OTL and teacher background are significant predictors of mathematics content knowledge (MCK) and mathematics pedagogical content knowledge (MPCK) as outcomes. OTL effects are partly mediated by differential student teacher intake. Data from multi-level models support our hypotheses with respect to gender, high-school achievement, motivation, OTL in mathematics and the mediating effect of student teacher intake. Background affects only MCK but not MPCK.     

Arithmetic and aging: Impact of quantitative knowledge and processing speed

The main objective of this study was to examine how quantitative knowledge (Gq in the CHC model) and processing speed (Gs in the CHC model) affect scores on the WAIS-III Arithmetic Subtest (Wechsler, 2000) with aging. Two age groups were compared: 30 young adults and 25 elderly adults. For both age groups, Gq was an important predictor of Arithmetic score variance (R² = 48% and R² = 45%, respectively). However, in line with Salthouse, the results showed that processing speed predicted Arithmetic scores only for the older adults, not for the younger ones (additional 9% of the variance for the elderly vs. 1% of the variance for the young adults). These results can clarify the ambiguous evolution of Arithmetic scores with aging: Arithmetic performance with aging seems to follow an intermediate path between Gc and Gf. This suggests that both Gq and Gs have an impact on Arithmetic in aging.     

Cross‐ and mono‐linguistic text processing in bilingual children

Bilingual German fourth‐graders are expected to develop greater linguistic awareness than monolingual children and therefore should habitually apply different text‐processing strategies compared with German monolingual fourth‐graders when comprehending and recalling a text. Bilingual children are expected to process texts from the bottom up, from the text base to the gist, whereas monolingual children should engage in top‐down processing, which is indicated, for example, by more text intrusions and inferences. This research attempts to clarify whether bilinguals show this shift in direction of processing when they process cross‐linguistic versus mono‐linguistic texts. The results of Experiment 1 supported our main hypothesis. Monolingual German fourth‐graders had more intrusions than same‐aged German–English (L1–L2) bilingual children. In Experiment 2, nearly balanced German–English and German‐dominant children were tested separately in within‐language free recall in both languages and in across‐language text recall. For nearly balanced bilingual children, within‐ and cross‐language recall was equally efficient in both languages but not for German‐dominant bilingual children – in their recall, more intrusions appeared in their L2 recall. Top‐down processing seems to increase when it is in the weaker language. Engaging in bottom‐up processing apparently is associated with cognitive functioning in L1.     

技能培养——一项面向未来的任务:变化中的德国图书馆员培养

在德国,图书馆员是具有适应图书馆工作多方面技能和知识的人。德国的图书馆员职业教育,是三年制双轨式教育。其图书馆员高等教育分布于9所高等专科学校和1所综合性大学里,学制一般为7-8学期,以培养硕士为主。     

Toward a Science of Learning Games

Reinforcement learning involves a tight coupling of reward‐associated behavior and a type of learning that is very different from that promoted by education. However, the emerging understanding of its underlying processes may help derive principles for effective learning games that have, until now, been elusive. This article first reviews findings from cognitive neuroscience and psychology to provide insight into the motivating role of uncertain reward in games, including educational games. Then, a short experiment is reported to illustrate the potential of reward‐based neurocomputational models of behavior in the understanding and development of effective learning games. In this study, a reward‐based model of behavior is shown to predict recall of newly learned information during a simple learning game.