The aim of the present research was to determine the role of reading-related experience and processing speed on the time it took for children to name familiar stimuli. A total of 168 children, aged 7 to 13, were administered measures of global processing speed, title and author recognition, naming time, and reading ability. Naming times were predicted by age-related change in processing time but not by reading experience (as assessed by author and title recognition). The results are discussed in terms of the factors responsible for the relation between naming speed and reading.

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An analysis of life span memory identifies those variables that affect losses in recall and recognition of the content of high school algebra and geometry courses. Even in the absence of further rehearsal activities, individuals who take college-level mathematics courses at or above the level of calculus have minimal losses of high school algebra for half a century. Individuals who performed equally well in the high school course but took no college mathematics courses reduce performance to near chance levels during the same period. In contrast, the best predictors of test performance (e.g., Scholastic Aptitude Test scores and grades) have trivial effects on the rate of performance decline. Pedagogical implications for life span maintenance of knowledge are derived and discussed.

Short-term memory (STM) and working memory (WM) are both central constructs in modern theories of memory and cognition,but only recently have researchers begun to examine the relation between them. In a theory proposed by Cowan (1988Cowan ( , 1995, STM refers to information in long-term memory that is activated above some threshold. Activated information rapidly returns to an inactive state unless it becomes the focus of limited-capacity attentionalprocesses. WM includes STM as well as the attentional processes used to keep some STM contents in an activated state. Similarly, Engle, Kane, and Tuholski (1999) argued that WM is "a system consisting of (a) a store in the form of long-term memory traces active above threshold, (b) processes for achieving and maintaining that activation, and (c) controlled attention" ( p. 104). Thus, in both theories, STM is a subcomponent of WM.This theoretical account of the relation between STM and WM leads to two straightforward predictions. First, tasks that measure STM should be distinguishable from, but related to, tasks that measure WM. That is, because STM is a subset of WM, (i.e., WM = STM + attention), performance on STM tasks should be related to performance on WM tasks. However, these correlations should be smaller than (1) correlations between performance on different STM tasks, and (2) correlations between performance on WM tasks. Of course, no tasks are pure measures of either STM or WM. Tasks thought to measure STM and WM often share other processes (e.g., encoding perceptual information, responding auditorily). These shared processes would tend to increase the size of the correlations between tasks. Consequently, the key prediction is that correlations measuring the same element of memory (STM or WM) should be greater than correlations measuring different elements (STM with WM).The second prediction concerns links between STM, WM, and higher order cognitive constructs such as reasoning, problem solving, and reading. In the course of reasoning, solving problems, and reading, individuals often must remember some task elements and ignore or inhibit other elements as they complete task-relevant operations. That is, in terms of the theories described previously, attention is used to maintain task-relevant information in an active state and to regulate controlled processing. Consequently, the expectation is that although STM and WM should both be related to measures of problem solving and reading skill, performance on these tasks should be predicted more accurately by WM than by STM.Regarding the f irst prediction, supporting evidence comes from two studies by Engle and his colleagues (Cantor, Engle, & Hamilton, 1991;Engle, Tuholski, Laughlin, & Conway, 1999 ). Simple digit span and word span tasks were administered, along with complex span tasks like those devised by Daneman and Carpenter (1980), in which participants read sets of sentences and concurrently remembered the last word from each sentence in the set. Factor analyses revealed that the simple span tasks and read...

The rrlatioti betweeti accirrcicy a t i d distortioti of OIItohiogrcipliicol metiiory cotitetit w~is e.rcitiiitied by wrijjyitig 3,220 high school grcrdes recalled by 99 college stircletits. Accirrucy ofrecrill clcclitied tiiotiototiicolly witli letter grcide, from 89% for griitles of A to 29% for grcides of D. The positire correlatioti betweeti cicliievetiietit atid riccirrricy of recull is cittrihirted to more freqrretit relieurscils of ciffectively positive cotitetit arid to greciter ciccrrrcicy of rc~cotistrirctivc itlferetices Ixised oti horiiogetiearrs. generic tiiemories. Most errors itlJluted the verified grude, mid the degree of myttitnetty of the error clistrihirtioti is ~rsed (IS m i itide-x of the degree of distortioti. Distortiotis are attributed to recotistrirctiotis iti o positire, etiiotiotiully griitifyitig directioti. Cotitrriry to e.rpcctotioti, tlir percetitcige of cIccirrcite recall Litid the degree of mytiittictry o f the error distrihirtiriti were irticorrelaterl. This fitiditig itidiccrtes that tlie process of distortioti does riot ~I I I I S C fiirgettitig of the wridiceil cotitetit. Rotlier, distortioti reflects h i m iti rrcotistrrrctive itgeretices that occiir ciffer the veridical cotitetit lieis hiwi fiirgotteti for other recisotis.During the past century, memory research focused primarily on the loss of memory content over time. Systematic modifications of memory content were also investigated, but methodological problems made this research more difticult and less popular. Gestalt theorists were the first to investigate distortions of content (Wulf, 1922(Wulf, /1938, and the classic research of Bartlett (1932) inspired current reconstructive views of memory (Bransford & Franks, 1972; Neisser, 1981), including accounts of reconstructive bias (Ross, 1989).There is now abundant evidence that memory content can undergo systematic changes. Diverse paradigms have been developed to investigate changes that are either induced by experimental interventions, such as Loftus's (1975) modifications of eyewitness reports and Fischoff s (1975) hindsight effect, or induced by the subject, reflecting reconstructions of the autobiographical past in accord with current self-perceptions (Ross, 1989). However, integrative accounts of the circumstances that produce systematic distortion instead of unbiased forgetting and of the direction and degree of distortion associated with various situational and individual difference variables are still lacking.Koriat and Goldsmith (1994) advocate research emphasizing the differences between quantity-oriented (number correct) and accuracy-oriented (fidelity) approaches to memory assessment. The former approach characterizes traditional laboratory research on the amount of retention; the latter characterizes naturalistic investigations concerned with the degree of fidelity of Address correspondence to Harry P. Bahrick. Department of Psychology. Ohio Wesleyan University, Delaware, OH 43015.he recalled content relative to the objective content. The resent investigat...