Thomas F. Cunningham

Effects of repetition on short-term retention of order information.

Two experiments examined the effects of repetition on the short-term retention of order information. A partial report procedure was coupled with the distractor paradigm to vary which one of two 4-letter sequences was tested after a digit-filled retention interval. Repeatedly presenting the stimulus but not its testing did not increase recall, but recall did increase when both presentation and testing were repeated. Recall was also improved by precues that informed subjects in advance which sequence was to be recalled. The perturbation model of Estes (1972; Lee & Estes, 1981) was able to account for the qualitative and quantitative aspects of the results by making an explicit distinction between two types of rehearsal: the reactivation process, which corresponds to a passive, automatic rehearsal process; and an active, conscious rehearsal process that crystallizes the memory structure and makes perturbations less likely.

A developmental evaluation of the role of word shape in word recognition

Fourth- and seventh-grade children and college-age adults proof read passages typed either in lowercase or in all capital letters. Words were misspelled by deleting one of four letters, s, c, k, or p, that have similar features in lowercase and uppercase. Proof reading errors decreased with age and increasing reading ability, but all of the subjects were sensitive to changes in word shape— they missed more words with deletions of s or c than k or p in the lowercase passage but not in the all-capitals passage. These findings indicate that word shape is an important variable in recognizing familiar words, even for young readers.

Effects of Cuing on Short-Term Retention of Order Information

In two experiments, subjects recalled one of two letter sequences following a digit-filled retention interval. Recall performance was increased by precues informing subjects which letter sequence would be tested, and the cuing advantage remained throughout 60-digit retention intervals. No improvement was found, however, for cues occurring after the letters but before the digits. The cuing effects were attributed to encoding, not rehearsal, processes and were explained by a version of the Estes perturbation model, which included a long-term storage component and a fixed perturbation probability.

Investigating the boundaries of reading units across ages and reading levels

In Experiments 1 and 2 first-, third-, and seventh-grade children and college subjects circled the letter a while reading passages constructed of words familiar to first graders. First graders made more errors on the letter a embedded in a word than on the word a, whereas the converse was true of the other age groups. In Experiments 3 and 4 first-, second-, fourth-, and seventh-grade children and college students read passages and circled the letter t, making more errors on the common word the than on other words and on correctly spelled than on misspelled words. The effect of misspelling the other words increased with age and reading skill. Our combined results suggest that reading unit size increases with age and reading ability and that, whereas younger children, like adults, unitize common words, the unitization of less common words increases as word configurations become more familiar.

Association between familial sinistrality and pathological left-handedness: a comparison of mentally retarded and nonretarded subjects.

The hypothesis that familial sinistrality (FS) might be a useful variable for differentiating between pathological and natural left-handers was explored. A comparison of the incidence of FS in mentally retarded and nonretarded samples indicated that a positive history of familial sinistrality (FS+) was significantly more likely to occur in mildly retarded individuals. In addition, left-handed retarded people, in general, were significantly more likely to be FS+ than were right-handed retarded people.

Is there really very rapid forgetting from primary memory? The role of expectancy and item importance in short-term recall.

In two experiments, subjects recalled one of two letter segments following a digit-filled retention interval. In Experiment 1, recall expectancy was manipulated by using precues that correctly informed or misinformed subjects concerning which letter segment wou;d be tested for recall. In Experiment 2, item importance was varied by precuing one segment as important but requiring that the uncued segment be recalled first. Recall performance was very low under conditions of low expectancy and low segment importance, but the slopes of the retention-functions did not demonstrate more rapid forgetting than under standard -conditions. The previous observations of very rapid forgetting from primary memory may be a function of an elevated initial recall level in the earlier studies. Our retention functions were compared with predictions of the Estes perturbation model. The findings suggested that when secondary memory processes were reduced, forgetting order information from primary memory occurred at the same rate as that estimated on the basis of previous studies using the standard distractor task.

Changes in the Relationship between Self-Esteem and Locus of Control

Les auteurs ont etudie les changements, survenant au cours du developpement, dans les relations entre estime de soi et locus of control, chez 56 enfants

Change and Stability in Self-Esteem between Late Childhood and Early Adolescence

Our purpose was to examine indices of change and stability in self-esteem between late childhood and early adolescence. The Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory was administered to 70 children at approximately age 9 and again at age 14. Analyses of the longitudinal data revealed significant (p < .05) increases in general measures of self-esteem as well as in specific subscales of the Self-Esteem Inventory. Significant test-retest correlation coefficients also attested to the relative stability of self-esteem measures across the five year age span. The findings contribute to the composite of recent longitudinal research indicating systematic increases in self-esteem throughout adolescence.

Very rapid forgetting: Reply to Muter

We reply to the commentary in which Muter (1995) disputes the findings and arguments of Cunningham, Healy, Till, Fendrich, and Dimitry (1993) concerning the rate of forgetting from primary memory. Although Muter (1980) had reported very rapid forgetting when secondary memory processes were minimized, Cunningham et al. found that the rate of forgetting from primary memory was no more rapid when secondary memory processes were minimal than it was when secondary memory processes were substantial. We locate the discrepancy between the two studies specifically at recall performance on the 0-sec retention interval, and we argue that the very rapid forgetting found by Muter (1980) can be attributed in large part to the fact that although subjects in his experiments did not expect to recall the letters after a filled retention interval, at the time of encoding and after an unfilled delay they did have a high overall expectancy to recall the letters.

The role of item distinctiveness in short-term recall of order information

In two experiments, we examined short-term recall of order information using a partial-report distractor task. We manipulated the characteristics of a single letter in one of two four-letter segments. Participants knew in advance the identity of the letters in each segment. We made a single letter distinctive at presentation either by printing it in red or by replacing it with a red dash. Presenting the letter in red did not affect overall recall of the positions of the letters in the segment but did facilitate specific recall of the position of the distinct letter. Replacing the letter with a red dash inhibited overall recall as well as specific recall of the distinct letter. Participants were also less likely to respond in the regular output order when there was a dash replacing a letter in the segment. These effects of distinctiveness are explained in terms of output order processes in recent versions of the perturbation model.