rhetorical schemata to be discussed in what follows. Finally, schemata are descriptions, not definitions. The ‘bus’ schema contains information that is nor-

http://www.discourses.org/OldBooks/Teun%20A%20van%20Dijk%20&%20Walter%20Kintsch%20-%20Strategies%20of%20Discourse%20Comprehension.pdf

Strategies of discourse comprehension

Recent changes in prctheorclical orientation toward problems of human memory have brought with them a concern with retrieval processes, and a number of early versions of theories of retrieval have been constructed. This paper describes and evaluates explanations offered by these theories to account for the effect of extralist cuing, facilitation of recall of list items by nonlist items. Experiments designed to test the currently most popular theory of retrieval, the generation-recognition theory, yielded results incompatible not only with generation-recognition models, but most other theories as well: under certain conditions subjects consistently failed to recognize many recallable list words. Several tentative explanations of this phenomenon of recognition failure were subsumed under the encoding specificity principle according to which the memory trace of an event and hence the properties of effective retrieval cue are determined by the specific encoding operations performed by the system on the input stimuli.

http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/rev/80/5/352.pdf

Encoding specificity and retrieval processes in episodic memory.

Forest before trees: The precedence of global features in visual perception ☆

The purpose of this review is to formulate a revised model of information processing that takes into account recent research on memory storage, selective attention, effortful versus automatic processing, and the mutual constraints that these areas place on one another. One distinctive aspect of the proposed model is the inclusion of two phases of sensory storage in each modality. The first phase extends sensation for several hundred milliseconds, whereas the second phase is a vivid recollection of sensation. The mechanism of at least the longer phase is the activation of features in long-term memory, comparable to the mechanism of non-sensory, short-term storage. Another distinctive aspect of the model is that habituation/dishabituation and central executive processes together are assumed to determine the focus of attention, without the need for either an early or a late attentional filter. Research issues that contribute to a comparison of models are discussed.

Evolving conceptions of memory storage, selective attention, and their mutual constraints within the human information-processing system.

The authors performed a meta-analysis of the distributed practice effect to illuminate the effects of temporal variables that have been neglected in previous reviews. This review found 839 assessments of distributed practice in 317 experiments located in 184 articles. Effects of spacing (consecutive massed presentations vs. spaced learning episodes) and lag (less spaced vs. more spaced learning episodes) were examined, as were expanding interstudy interval (ISI) effects. Analyses suggest that ISI and retention interval operate jointly to affect final-test retention; specifically, the ISI producing maximal retention increased as retention interval increased. Areas needing future research and theoretical implications are discussed.

/pdf/distributed-practice-in-verbal-recall-tasks-a-review-and-57lzd2e2jb.pdf

Distributed practice in verbal recall tasks: A review and quantitative synthesis.

The psychological reality of phrase-structure rules

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the role of chunking and organization in the process of recall. There are four concepts associated with the organization of memory: chunk, memory code, decode, and recode. Chunks have been operationally defined as behavior sequences, which tend to occur either adjacently or in an all-or-none manner. Theoretically, they can be defined as item or information sets, which are stored within the same memory code, with the code and the chunk being distinct. Recoding refers to the process of learning the code for a chunk, and decoding is the process of translating the code into the information it represents. Organization plays a major role in the associative relations between an item in a sequence and all the other items in the sequence. When the items are from the same chunk, there appears to be a transferable association, but if they are from different chunks the transfer is small, if it exists at all. Chunks may also represent decision units in recall.

Neal F. Johnson

Papers

The psychological reality of phrase-structure rules

The Role of Chunking and Organization in The Process of Recall

On the function of letters in word identification: Some data and a preliminary model

A Cohort Model of Visual Word Recognition

Massed Versus Distributed Repetition of Homographs: A Test of the Differential-Encoding Hypothesis.