Advances in Cognitive Sciences
Year:2002 | Volume:4 | Issue:2|Papers Count:8

A brief account of the concept of working memory is presented, followed by a more detailed description of one sub-component of the system, namely the phonological loop. The question of the functional significance of this component of working memory is discussed. Evidence suggests a minor role in language comprehension, together with a much more substantial role in the capacity to acquire novel phonological, and possibly grammatical forms. It is suggested that the phonological loop has evolved as a mechanism for language acquisition.

It has recently been shown that phonological problems tend to persist in adults with childhood reading problems, even when the adults reading skill is within normal range. Many adults with reading problems tend, in the long run, to develop qualitatively different word decoding ability with less specific orthographic knowledge and relying more on context and topdown processing. This presentation reports on phonological processing and word decoding abilities in samples of adults with a history of reading problems. The results also illustrate secondary effects of reading problems, like low self-esteem and low aspiration level, and how these effects may restrict the student's choice among alternative college and university programs.

Recent work on consciousness, especially work by philosophers, displays a deep-running divide between representationalists (those who think that consciousness is a kind or aspect of a representation of some kind) and anti-representationists, and those who focus on individual conscious states or small groups of states (atomists) and those who focus on complete conscious systems (the systems approach). These distinction crosscut. This paper explores the resulting two-by-two matrix and ends with some reasons for favouring a representational systems approach.

Three experiments investigated the possibility of creating false memories using lists of phonologically-related Farsi words and under conditions of focused and divided attention(at retrieval). In Experiments 1 and 2 with normal children and adults as participants, considerable rates of false recall and false recognition were observed under both focused and divided attention conditions. In Experiment 3 with 12 amnesic elderly participants, false memories were low under focused and moderate under divided attention. The results indicate that phonologically associated words like semantically associated ones may lead to false memories. The findings are discussed in terms of the activation models.

Kelly's constructive epistemology needs to transcend its background of instrumentalism arising from Dewey's influence. What enables us to well avoid instrumentalism is a notion of truth that incorporates both coherence and correspondence. If we were to abandon coherence, we would have to embrace the naive conception of realism, while by abandonning correspondence we would have to embrace instrumentalism because we would have to consider the workability of a theory or a construction system and its coherence with previously successful ones as constituting the turth of a given theory or construction system. Such a realistic constructivism privides a more satisfactory conception of personal constructs. According to this view, we no longer think that personal constructs are either true nor false, rather they are divided in true and false in accordance with the grasp of reality reflected in our best theories. In other words, having provided a theory of truth, we are ready to compare different personal constructs with the grasp of reality involved in the theory in terms of their correspondence with that grasp. Furthermore, this conception of constructivism makes it possible to talk of the approximation of personal constructs to reality. Having provided a conception of correspondence, not only have we avoided instrumentalism, but also talking of approximation makes more sense. This is because our best theories provide an account of the world with reference to which we an talk of more or less approximate personal constructs. In this sense, more valid personal constructs are those that are more approximate, that is, more correspondent to the reality.

There is a connection between children's language development and their ability to learn to read and this relationship includes several aspects of language and holds both in a short-term and a longitudinal perspective. Early prediction and identification of reading problems is an essential condition for early remediation and prevention. The first precursors of reading acquisition can be found early during the preschool period, long before the onset of formal reading instruction. Individual differences during the very first stages of formal reading instruction are also highly predictive of future development. The importance of the strength of association between early predictors and outcome is discussed as well as problems related to causality. Several practical assessment methods are illustrated and discussed.

In comparing reading, listening and TV presentation modes, we are dealing with diverse literature. More interest has been shown in the history to compare learning and memory from reading and listening than any other communication forms. TV invention in 1950s has revolted the convention into a wider dilemma. More recent literature review in comparative media indicates that there are widespread discrepancies among the reports on memories from presentation modes. Various explanations have been put forward to account for these differences. Different accounts portrait various reasons; depending to which decade and to what scope they belong. Literature from education and accounts from media and communication studies raise the issue of channel augmentation, channel enrichment, symbol system, and signal redundancy as the main topics affecting memory from presentation modes. Learning from media is best measured up when recalls from these modes are usually compared. When comprehension and learning mixes with memory issues in the measurement of input processing from each mode, the complicated cognition and its principal information processing measures become of the major concern. This paper shows how research into aspects of bisensory augmentation of TV versus other modes, is sparse, unconvincing and sporadic, and attempts to explain the reasons. To achieve this goal, the shortcomings of the literature with distinct theoretical stands on this subject of channel comparison are identified. It is shown that all these factors have produced a multi-dimensional perspective, convincing that the comparison is too complex to allow a simple evaluation. This paper also explores broad underlying cognitive effects in comparative conditions of presentation modes. In this article brief summary of factors that have not been considered in comparative media are explained. It is suggested that instead of formal comparison of these modes on surface, by looking at the underlying factors and applying, cognitive psychological findings to this area can make the borders clearer.

To find out the level of processing of pre-attentive objects we preferred to use cues, i.e., a transient visual stimuli that may attract attention automatically or voluntarily (peripherally or centrally presented cues). In one of our recent experiments (Authors, Unpublished experiment), we observed that color similarity of cue and target does not improve subject's performance in a peripherally cued detection task. In this paper we describe another experiment which had two kinds of symbolic cues presented in the fixation point (at the center) and showed the subjects where to deploy their attention (right or left) according to their shapes. Subjects were asked to detect the target (i.e. a simple detection task) or to discriminate between two alternate targets, different in some features except color (i.e. a common discrimination task). We compared the reaction time (RT) in both types in same feature condition (target's color. was similar to cue's) and different feature condition(target's color was different from cue's). Results showed significant difference between them. So we concluded that with increased exposure, color -as an unattended feature of the central cue- can also get processed and improve subjects performance.