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Great strides have been made in the development of effective methods of instruction for children with dyslexia. However, individual response to treatment varies, and weaknesses persist for some students with dyslexia despite otherwise effective instruction. Continued efforts are needed to support the prospective identification of poor response, particularly in routine intervention settings. The current study addressed whether indicators of dyslexia risk as outlined by hybrid diagnostic models predict response in children who received Tier 3 dyslexia intervention in their schools. The program’s efficacy has been previously documented in remediating reading abilities in children with dyslexia. Data were examined from 115 elementary-age children who received routine Tier 3 dyslexia intervention in their schools. Logistic regression revealed powerful effects of preintervention fluency and gender in predicting response, with weaker effects of decoding and rapid naming. Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder status also played a role in predicting response. Phonological awareness and listening-reading comprehension discrepancy did not predict response. Profile analyses indicated near- and far-transfer of skill for the adequate response group, whereas growth in the poor response group was limited to near-transfer. Findings support a continuum of severity that may be associated with less robust growth and generalization over the course of the intervention.

Translating the research base on effective reading instruction to the classroom has been a challenge. The delivery of these instructional methods requires practical skills coupled with an understanding of the aspects of language being taught. The purpose of this study was to explore the level of literacy knowledge of the English language held by educators who provide instruction to students in the primary grades. Data from 1369 classroom teachers, 74 reading interventionists, and 131 special educators comprising the analytic sample were collected as part of a training initiative in a US state. Participating educators completed a 50-item test of phonological sensitivity, phonemic awareness, decoding, encoding, and morphology. Multiple regression analyses confirmed differences in the levels of knowledge observed between the groups of educators. Reading interventionists demonstrated greater knowledge than classroom teachers and special educators in the total proportion of correct responses and across each domain. Classroom teachers demonstrated greater knowledge than special educators in phonological sensitivity and decoding but did not differ from each other in phonemic awareness, encoding, or morphology knowledge. Special educators provide intervention to students with the most severe forms of reading disabilities, yet they had the lowest level of knowledge. In contrast, reading interventionists, who provide intervention within general education, had the highest levels of knowledge. These findings suggest a need to elevate the knowledge of special educators and consider reading interventionists' role in supporting students identified with a specific learning disability in reading.

Considerable effort has been exerted to identify effective instructional methods to teach reading in the early grades. Ideally, these practices would be provided to students by knowledgeable educators. However, many educators lack linguistic knowledge of the English language and essential concepts about early literacy acquisition that predict student reading outcomes. Furthermore, the in-service training needed to fill gaps in educator knowledge is costly and challenging to deliver at scale. Online educator training has the potential to provide a cost-effective, more readily scalable option. However, limited research has explored the efficacy of online training to increase educator knowledge of early grade reading. The current study was conducted to test the effectiveness of online training to improve educators’ knowledge of early grade reading concepts. Educators (N = 86 in the analytic sample) who primarily supported students in grades K-5 were assigned randomly to one of three training conditions: waitlist control, in-person, or online. They all completed a test before and after receiving training that assessed their knowledge of early-grade reading concepts. An ANCOVA that controlled for baseline knowledge revealed that educators who received training either in-person or online had increased knowledge of early grade reading after the training relative to the waitlist control group. Furthermore, educators who received in-person training outperformed educators who received online training. This study suggests that online training provides a viable alternative to in-person in-service training and highlights a need to consider ways of enhancing the impact of online training on educator knowledge.

Resilient readers comprehend written language despite word reading deficits. The reading resiliency framework specifies candidate protective factors hypothesized to mitigate adverse effects on reading comprehension arising from phonological decoding deficiencies and, consequently, illuminates how some individuals exhibit relative reading resiliency. A focus on relative reading resiliency involves an examination of individual strengths and weaknesses because areas of relative strength can bolster one's abilities. The ability for morphological awareness and vocabulary to be strengths or protective factors contributing to reading resiliency was explored in a sample of university students. Morphological awareness is predicted to be a particularly important skill for university students due to the complexity of texts encountered in their coursework. A measure of word-level morphological awareness was positively associated with relative reading resiliency. Furthermore, across norm-referenced and standardized high-stakes testing measures of reading comprehension, vocabulary mediated the impact of morphological awareness on comprehension after controlling for phonological decoding ability. These findings suggest that morphological awareness and vocabulary skills are important contributing factors to reading comprehension and reading resilience.

A grassroots movement of parents who fear that their children’s reading struggles are going unrecognized at school has led to dyslexia laws in all but three states in the U.S. The current study was undertaken to provide data relevant to this topic by characterizing the reading profiles of 71 children referred for testing at a center specializing in the assessment of reading disabilities. These children were receiving instruction and intervention in reading across the tiers of instructional support in general and special education within their schools. On average, the children demonstrated equivalent deficits in print literacy skills on norm-referenced assessments regardless of the intensity of their reading support, and the majority of children who were only receiving tier 1 instruction exhibited characteristics of dyslexia. Moreover, 69% of children only receiving tier 1 instruction, and all remaining children, performed below benchmark expectations on a curriculum-based measure of oral reading fluency. While these data are not an evaluation of the implementation of the state’s dyslexia laws or the statewide implementation of RTI, they provide data characterizing the real struggles and lack of identification of children whose parents seek an external evaluation of their children’s reading skills. However, they are set in the context of a state in which 66% of public-school children cannot read proficiently by the end of the third grade. The reading struggles highlighted in this clinic referral sample are unexceptional in the larger state context.

Common tests of morphological awareness measure both morphology and syntax by requiring participants to fit words and pseudowords into sentences by adding or removing affixes. We report the results of a study testing a new word level task. College students viewed transparent words (without phonological or orthographic shifts) and used a keyboard to indicate whether the items contained 1, 2, 3, or 4 morphemes. Morpheme counting accuracy was strongly and significantly correlated with sentence level tests of morphological awareness, also grouping with them in a factor analysis, suggesting that the tasks measure a similar construct. Morpheme counting accuracy was also strongly and significantly correlated with the word identification and passage comprehension measures from the WJ-IV. Crossed random-effects modeling showed that all tasks were sensitive to word frequency and vocabulary. However, different MA tasks varied in their sensitivity to the sublexical properties of words. Responses in the sentence level tasks were sensitive to word and bigram frequency while responses in the word level task was sensitive to base frequency and the number of morphemes. Our findings suggest that conscious knowledge of root words and affixes can be directly measured at the word level without a syntactic component to the task and that responses do capture variation in the ability to decompose complex words into their component morphemes.

Conversations about the nature of dyslexia and how dyslexia impacts reading and listening comprehension get to the heart of classification and identification models of dyslexia. Recently, this conversation has been expanded to include efforts to estimate the prevalence of dyslexia in the population through the introduction of a discrepancy index of listening comprehension and reading comprehension. This discrepancy index was proposed to serve as a proxy for dyslexia when estimating its prevalence in the population. Individuals whose reading comprehension is considerably lower than their listening comprehension are thought to exhibit unexpected reading deficits. However, the index could underrepresent certain groups within the population. The current study explored this possibility using data from a sample of 4078 public-school students. We hypothesized that students from historically marginalized or otherwise disenfranchised groups (i.e., poor and minority groups) would be less likely to have a positive listening comprehension - reading comprehension (LC-RC) discrepancy index. Based on the results of multilevel linear mixed effect modeling, socioeconomic status (SES) contributed to differential performance on the discrepancy index when it was calculated using residual scores. Moreover, African American students were identified as having a reliably lower discrepancy index regardless of how it was calculated. It appears that this index, which only looks at the comprehension of language and not production, may, in fact, disadvantage students for whom oral language production differs from General American English (GAE). These outcomes suggest that this measure may lack the sensitivity to identify bidialectal students with dyslexia.

A grassroots movement of parents who fear that their children's reading struggles are going unrecognized at school has led to dyslexia laws in all but three states in the U.S. The current study was undertaken to provide data relevant to this topic by characterizing the reading profiles of 71 children referred for testing at a center specializing in the assessment of reading disabilities. These children were receiving instruction and intervention in reading across the tiers of instructional support in general and special education within their schools. On average, the children demonstrated equivalent deficits in print literacy skills on norm-referenced assessments regardless of the intensity of their reading support, and the majority of children who were only receiving tier 1 instruction exhibited characteristics of dyslexia. Moreover, 69% of children only receiving tier 1 instruction, and all remaining children, performed below benchmark expectations on a curriculum-based measure of oral reading fluency. While these data are not an evaluation of the implementation of the state's dyslexia laws or the statewide implementation of RTI, they provide data characterizing the real struggles and lack of identification of children whose parents seek an external evaluation of their children's reading skills. However, they are set in the context of a state in which 66% of public-school children cannot read proficiently by the end of the third grade. The reading struggles highlighted in this clinic referral sample are unexceptional in the larger state context.

Resilient readers comprehend written language despite word reading deficits. The reading resiliency framework specifies candidate protective factors hypothesized to mitigate adverse effects on reading comprehension arising from phonological decoding deficiencies and, consequently, illuminates how some individuals exhibit relative reading resiliency. A focus on relative reading resiliency involves an examination of individual strengths and weaknesses because areas of relative strength can bolster one's abilities. The ability for morphological awareness and vocabulary to be strengths or protective factors contributing to reading resiliency was explored in a sample of university students. Morphological awareness is predicted to be a particularly important skill for university students due to the complexity of texts encountered in their coursework. A measure of word-level morphological awareness was positively associated with relative reading resiliency. Furthermore, across norm-referenced and standardized high-stakes testing measures of reading comprehension, vocabulary mediated the impact of morphological awareness on comprehension after controlling for phonological decoding ability. These findings suggest that morphological awareness and vocabulary skills are important contributing factors to reading comprehension and reading resilience.

Translating the research base on effective reading instruction to the classroom has been a challenge. The delivery of these instructional methods requires practical skills coupled with an understanding of the aspects of language being taught. The purpose of this study was to explore the level of literacy knowledge of the English language held by educators who provide instruction to students in the primary grades. Data from 1369 classroom teachers, 74 reading interventionists, and 131 special educators comprising the analytic sample were collected as part of a training initiative in a US state. Participating educators completed a 50-item test of phonological sensitivity, phonemic awareness, decoding, encoding, and morphology. Multiple regression analyses confirmed differences in the levels of knowledge observed between the groups of educators. Reading interventionists demonstrated greater knowledge than classroom teachers and special educators in the total proportion of correct responses and across each domain. Classroom teachers demonstrated greater knowledge than special educators in phonological sensitivity and decoding but did not differ from each other in phonemic awareness, encoding, or morphology knowledge. Special educators provide intervention to students with the most severe forms of reading disabilities, yet they had the lowest level of knowledge. In contrast, reading interventionists, who provide intervention within general education, had the highest levels of knowledge. These findings suggest a need to elevate the knowledge of special educators and consider reading interventionists' role in supporting students identified with a specific learning disability in reading.

All but seven U.S. states have laws that govern some aspects of dyslexia screening, intervention, or teacher training in public schools. However, in the three states that mandate child-level reporting, data indicate lower than expected rates of dyslexia identification when compared with commonly accepted dyslexia prevalence rates. To better understand this apparent mismatch, this study explores factors that might predict the school-assigned identification of individuals with dyslexia. Deidentified data on 7,947 second-grade students in 126 schools from one U.S. state included a universal screening measure of literacy skills indicative of dyslexia (i.e., reading and spelling), school-assigned dyslexia classification, and demographic characteristics. As expected, behavioral characteristics of dyslexia from universal screening were associated with school-assigned dyslexia classification. However, dyslexia classification was less likely for minority students and individuals attending schools with a higher percentage of minority students. Students who showed behavioral characteristics of dyslexia and attended schools with a higher proportion of other students with similar poor literacy skills were more likely not to receive a school-assigned dyslexia classification. The findings suggest systematic demographic differences in whether a student is identified with dyslexia by schools even when using universal screening.

Dyslexia is a specific learning disability that impacts word reading accuracy and/or reading fluency. Over half of the states in the USA have passed legislation intended to promote better identification of individuals with dyslexia. To date, no study has been conducted to investigate the potential impact of state laws on the identification of specific learning disability (SLD), and limited data has been presented on the rate at which students in public school settings are identified with dyslexia. The first aim of the current study was to determine if any detectable changes in the identification rates of SLD have occurred in states implementing dyslexia laws because most states do not report number of students identified as dyslexic but rather those students identified with an SLD. The second aim of the study was to characterize the rate of identifying dyslexia in the two states (Texas and Arkansas) that require public schools to report the number of students identified with dyslexia. The third aim was to characterize the identification rate across first to 12th grades. Current SLD rates range from 3.2 to 8.5% in all 50 states. Analysis of SLD prevalence rates did not vary between states with and without dyslexia laws in place. Moreover, there was no change in the identification of SLD once states had implemented these laws. Rates of dyslexia in Arkansas and Texas were less than 5%. Given the persistent levels indicating lack of reading proficiency, our review of data suggests that overall students with dyslexia are being underidentified.

This chapter reviews the processes involved in the assessment and identification of learning disabilities (LDs). A brief comparison of school-based and clinical settings and a discussion of theoretical models used to define and understand the construct of LDs are provided. A variation of a hybrid model that requires three types of information to be gathered and synthesized to make recommendations for instructional plans is described. Examples of measures that may be used to document inadequate response to appropriate instruction and poor achievement within specified academic domains are included. The chapter concludes by urging individuals to use a hybrid model in the identification process and integrate any assessment results with the planning of instructional targets.

Roughly 26-32% of U. S. veterans who served in the 1991 Persian Gulf War report suffering from chronic health problems. Memory complaints are regularly reported by ill Gulf War veterans (GWV), but limited data verify their complaints. This study investigated episodic memory and brain function in a nationally representative sample of GWV, using a face-name memory task and functional magnetic resonance imaging during encoding. A syndrome classification system was used to subdivide ill GWV into the three major Gulf War Illness syndrome types, "impaired cognition" (GWV-1), "confusion ataxia" (GWV-2), and "central pain" (GWV-3). Memory and brain function of ill GWV were contrasted to deployed and nondeployed well GWV controls (GWV-C). Ill GWV exhibited impaired memory function relative to GWV-C but the patterns of functional brain differences varied. Brain activation differentiated the GWV-C from the ill GWV. The different syndrome types also differed from one another in several brain regions. Additionally, the current study was the first to observe differences in brain function between deployed and nondeployed GWV-C. These results provide (1) evidence of memory impairment in ill GWV and differentiate the syndrome types at a functional neurobiological level, and (2) the role of deployment in the war on brain function.

An object rhyming task that does not require text reading and is suitable for younger children was used to predict gains in word level reading skills following an intensive 2-year reading intervention for children with developmental dyslexia. The task evoked activation in bilateral inferior frontal regions. Growth in untimed pseudoword reading was associated with increased pre-intervention activation of the left inferior frontal gyrus, and growth in timed word reading was associated with pre-intervention activation of the left and right inferior frontal gyri. These analyses help identify pre-intervention factors that facilitate reading skill improvements in children with developmental dyslexia.

Addressing the needs of students with dyslexia requires an in-depth knowledge of various components of a multi-dimensional approach to reading intervention, which is supported by an understanding of the structure of the language being taught. The current study explored the association between teacher knowledge of the English language and different stages of training provided through 2-year courses that meet the objectives of the International Dyslexia Association (IDA) standards of teacher knowledge and practice. It included 347 K-12 licensed teachers who were at various stages of training when they completed a test of knowledge in the areas of Phonological Sensitivity, Phonemic Awareness, Decoding, Spelling, and Morphology. The level of terminal degree (i.e., BA or MA) held by participating teachers and their amount of teaching experience did not predict performance on the test. In contrast, participating teachers differed in their level of knowledge as a function of how much training they had received as part of a 2-year course. Increased training was associated with elevated levels of knowledge. Moreover, teachers who completed the 2-year training program and went on to obtain certification through a national certifying organization had reliably greater knowledge than those who had not. Additionally, the weakest domains of knowledge across all teachers were in spelling and morphology, suggesting a need for improved training in these domains, given that they are identified deficiencies for persistently poor responders to reading intervention and in children presenting with late emerging forms of reading disability.

Literature on the developmental trajectory of cognition in Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) presents several inconsistent findings. In this review, we focus on information processing, and specifically, the use of gist and verbatim representations to guide memory, reasoning, and concept formation. The added perspective of Fuzzy Trace Theory may help to resolve mixed results regarding the frequency, nature, and effectiveness of gist processing in ASD by providing established process models and tasks suitable for use in individuals at all levels of functioning. In order to demonstrate the utility of FTT to the field of ASD research, we present evidence from three complementary theories–Weak Central Coherence (WCC), Executive Function (EF), and Theory of Mind (ToM)–which have dominated the landscape to date. We discuss the potential utility of FTT tasks and process models, proposing testable hypotheses that address ambiguous or conflicting results in the current literature. Applying a theory of typical development to the study of ASD may add value to past and future research.

Roughly 26-32% of US veterans, who served in the first Gulf War, report suffering from chronic health problems ( Golomb, 2008 , Proceedings of the National Academies of Science, 105, 4295). The present study investigated the memory deficits reported by these ill Gulf War veterans (GWV) using a face-name associative memory paradigm administered during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The fMRI data confirmed memory performance on the memory task to be related to the amount of activation in the left hippocampus observed during the study. In addition, ill-GWV demonstrated decreased memory performance relative to unaffected GWV on this memory test, providing evidence of memory deficits using an objective measure of memory.

Age-related declines in associative memory are proposed to result from deficits in older adults' ability to recollect the past. The present experiment investigated the ability of older adults to compensate for deficits in recollecting the past by using plausibility. Participants studied a list of word pairs that shared category or rhyme relations. To measure the processes used during the recognition memory test, participants provided self-reported explanations for their memory judgements. Older adults relied primarily on plausibility, and the younger adults relied on both plausibility and recollection. Older adults experienced both positive and negative consequences as a result of using a knowledge-based strategy to compensate for their decreased ability to recollect the past. Specifically, they were just as capable as younger adults at recognising previously studied items and correctly rejecting distractors that were inconsistent with the rule provided at study. However, they falsely recognised distractors that were consistent with that rule more often than younger adults.

Older adults experience a selective associative memory deficit by demonstrating intact item memory relative to impaired associative memory when compared with younger adults. Age-related deficits in associative memory have been suggested to arise from declines in attentional resources, and the role of attention during encoding and retrieval in associative memory for words and their spatial locations was investigated in the current experiment. Additionally, the tendency of younger and older adults to use knowledge acquired during encoding to improve their associative memory judgments through a strategic associative memory process was also investigated. Younger and older adults studied a list of words with each word belonging to one of four categories, which followed one of four mathematical probability structures for their presentation. Older adults exhibited intact item memory and impaired associative memory relative to full attention younger adults. In addition, both older and younger adults demonstrated an ability to engage in strategic associative memory, by learning and later using the probability structure introduced at study to guide their associative memory judgments. In contrast, dividing the attention of younger adults during encoding impaired item memory, associative memory and strategic associative memory, whereas dividing attention at retrieval did not result in similar deficits. These data add to a growing body of literature demonstrating older adults to exhibit a selective associative memory deficit that is not simulated by dividing the attention of younger adults at encoding or retrieval. Furthermore, younger and older adults maintain the ability to use new knowledge to guide their associative judgments.

Individuals with dyslexia often demonstrate bilateral inferior frontal lobe activation while performing basic reading tasks. To investigate these findings, functional connectivity analyses were conducted on fMRI data collected from children with dyslexia, who did and did not respond well to treatment, and from non-impaired readers. Analysis of active and resting-state fMRI data across 15 participants revealed functional connections between the inferior frontal regions in non-impaired readers and treatment responders, but not in treatment non-responders. Analyses incorporating DTI data revealed associations with anterior corpus callosum structures. These results suggest that bilateral frontal functional connectivity is normative and may facilitate treatment response.

To determine, with arterial spin labeling (ASL) perfusion magnetic resonance (MR) imaging and physostigmine challenge, if abnormal hippocampal blood flow in ill Gulf War veterans persists 11 years after initial testing with single photon emission computed tomography and nearly 20 years after the 1991 Gulf War.The local institutional review board approved this HIPAA-compliant study. Veterans were screened for contraindications and gave written informed consent before the study. In a semiblinded retrospective protocol, veterans in three Gulf War illness groups-syndrome 1 (impaired cognition), syndrome 2 (confusion-ataxia), and syndrome 3 (central neuropathic pain)-and a control group received intravenous infusions of saline in an initial session and physostigmine in a second session, 48 hours later. Each infusion was followed by measurement of hippocampal regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) with pulsed ASL. A mixed-effects linear model adjusted for age was used to test for differences in rCBF after the cholinergic challenge across the four groups.Physostigmine significantly decreased hippocampal rCBF in control subjects (P.0005) and veterans with syndrome 1 (P.05) but significantly increased hippocampal rCBF in veterans with syndrome 2 (P.005) and veterans with syndrome 3 (P.002). The abnormal increase in rCBF was found to have progressed to the left hippocampus of the veterans with syndrome 2 and to both hippocampi of the veterans with syndrome 3.Chronic hippocampal perfusion dysfunction persists or worsens in veterans with certain Gulf War syndromes. ASL MR imaging examination of hippocampal rCBF in a cholinergic challenge experiment may be useful as a diagnostic test for this condition.

The present research examined the influence of prior knowledge on children’s free recall, cued recall, recognition memory, and source memory judgments for a series of similar real-life events. Forty children (5–12 years old) attended 4 thematic birthday parties and were later interviewed about the events that transpired during the parties using the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development protocol. Of the events, half were generic in that they could have occurred at any birthday party, and half were specific to the theme of the party. Older children demonstrated more evidence of using gist-based information to guide their memory performance than did younger children. However, younger children were able to use global gist to inform their source memory judgments, qualifying past word-learning research.

Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) was used to investigate the relationship between white matter and reading abilities in reading impaired and non-reading impaired children. Seventeen children (7 non-reading impaired, 10 reading impaired) participated in this study. DTI was performed with 2 mm isotropic resolution to cover the entire brain along 30 noncollinear directions. Voxelwise analyses were conducted on data processed through Tract Based Spatial Statistics (TBSS). The data replicated previous results seen across multiple studies and extended findings to include measures of both real word and pseudoword decoding. Negative correlations were observed in the left posterior corpus callosum between fractional anisotropy (FA) values and both measures of decoding. Positive correlations between FA values and real word and pseudoword decoding were observed in the left superior corona radiata. This extension of findings regarding correlations between the corona radiata and reading skills suggests an important direction for future research into the neurological substrates of reading.

A surge of research has been conducted to examine memory editing mechanisms that help distinguish accurate from inaccurate memories. In the present experiment, the authors examined the ability of participants to use novelty detection, recollection rejection, and plausibility judgments to reject lures presented on a recognition memory test. Participants studied a list of word pairs that were arranged in a category relationship (both words from the same category) or an unrelated relationship (both words from different categories) under full or divided attention. At test, participants were given a yes/no recognition test in which they were to respond after seeing the test items for 400 ms or 2,800 ms. Some of the test items were rearranged word pairs that were consistent with the study relationship, whereas others were inconsistent with the study relationship. The results demonstrate that the participants required full attention at study to use novelty detection, recollection rejection, and plausibility judgments to reject lures. Moreover, the results indicate that a long response deadline at test was needed for participants to use both recollection rejection and plausibility judgments to reject lures.

Developmental dyslexia is associated with functional abnormalities within reading areas of the brain. For some children diagnosed with dyslexia, phonologically based remediation programs appear to rehabilitate brain function in key reading areas (Shaywitz et al., Biological Psychiatry 55: 101-110, 2004; Simos et al., Neuroscience 58: 1203-1213, 2002). However, a non-trivial number of children diagnosed with dyslexia fail to respond to these interventions (Torgesen, Learning Disabilities Research & Practice 15: 55-64, 2000). A cross-sectional fMRI study investigating post-treatment effects was conducted in an effort to better understand differences in brain function between treatment responders and non-responders. Educational testing and brain activation measured after treatment suggested that the reading intervention used in the present study rehabilitated several basic level reading processes in all participants diagnosed with dyslexia. However, activation in the left inferior parietal lobe differentiated treatment responders and non-responders in comparison to non-impaired readers. Children with persistent deficits in single word decoding (treatment non-responders) demonstrated significantly less activation in the left inferior parietal lobe when compared to non-impaired readers.

In the typical memory conjunction experiment, participants are presented with two "parent" stimulus items (e.g., blackmail and jailbird) that are later recombined to form a "conjunction lure" (e.g., blackbird). This paradigm is an efficient way to test false memories because participants frequently show false recognition for the recombined features of the previously studied stimuli. Two experiments are reported in which normative data for 96 memory conjunction triplets are presented. The first experiment provides descriptive statistics for how often the conjunction triplets show true and false recognition. Due to the variance in the rates of false recognition for the conjunction lure, the second experiment was conducted to help build an understanding of the factors that affect the rate of false recognition of the conjunction lures. Conceptual overlap of the first parent word and the conjunction item predicted false recognition. Digital files containing norms for 96 memory conjunction triplets may be downloaded from www.psychonomic.org/archive.

Both positive and negative testing effects have been demonstrated with a variety of materials and paradigms (Roediger & Karpicke, 2006b). The present series of experiments replicate and extend the research of Roediger and Marsh (2005) with the addition of a "none-of-the-above" response option. Participants (n=32 in both experiments) read a set of passages, took an initial multiple-choice test, completed a filler task, and then completed a final cued-recall test (Experiment 1) or multiple-choice test (Experiment 2). Questions were manipulated on the initial multiple-choice test by adding a "none-of-the-above" response alternative (choice "E") that was incorrect ("E" Incorrect) or correct ("E" Correct). The results from both experiments demonstrated that the positive testing effect was negated when the "none-of-the-above" alternative was the correct response on the initial multiple-choice test, but was still present when the "none-of-the-above" alternative was an incorrect response.

Within this article, a general organisational framework for this special issue of Memory is provided. The organising structure is based on a straightforward hypothesis that editing mechanisms are based on three independent constructs: knowledge, criteria, and alignment. Supporting evidence for this general framework taken from the literature generally, and this special issue of Memory specifically, is reviewed. In the concluding section, future directions for research in the area of memory editing are outlined.

Across two experiments, we investigated the importance of meaning in facilitating recollection rejection in the memory conjunction paradigm. In support of a moderating role of meaning on the occurrence of recollection rejection, we observed conjunction and feature lures that shared considerable semantic similarity with their corresponding studied items to evoke greater rates of recollection rejection than conjunction and feature lures that shared minimal semantic similarity with their corresponding studied items. Collectively these findings suggest an important role for the amount of conceptual similarity shared between related lures and their corresponding study items in evoking recollection rejection, with an emphasis placed on the role of interference in generating the effect. The research also helps to clarify previous research conducted using the memory conjunction paradigm to investigate recollection rejection.

Failure to follow the recommended guidelines for conducting lineups set forth by the Department of Justice (DOJ) could result in fewer convictions. To test this supposition, mock jurors read 1 of 3 versions of a court transcript. In 1 version, no issues were raised about how the investigating officer conducted the photo array. In the second version, 2 procedural errors made by the investigator were highlighted. In the third version, the defense attorney highlighted 2 procedural errors and mentioned that these errors violated the DOJ guidelines. Mock jurors informed of the procedural errors their violation of the DOJ guidelines found the prosecution's case against the defendant to be weaker than mock jurors in the other 2 conditions. Also, mock jurors informed of the procedural errors were less likely to find the defendant guilty than mock jurors in the other 2 conditions. Thus, the failure of law enforcement to implement the DOJ guidelines could be used to discredit the prosecution's case in the jurors' eyes.

When people imagine performing simple actions they can sometimes become confused about whether they actually performed the actions or only imagined doing so. In the present study participants performed, imagined, and heard groups of actions. During a second session participants imagined some of the earlier actions as well as some entirely new actions. On a later memory test participants sometimes falsely indicated that they had performed actions that they had only imagined and this tendency was a positive function of number of imaginings. We also found that true and false memories differed in terms of degree of perceptual detail, associated thoughts, emotions, contextual information, and kinesthetic detail. Differences between true and false memories were smaller when the action was imagined five times but were not entirely eliminated. These findings suggest that false memories produced in this paradigm can be both compelling and yet subtly different from true memories. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The current experiment examined the use of plausibility judgments by children to reject distractors presented on yes/no recognition memory tests. Participants studied two lists of word pairs that shared either a categorical or rhyme association, which constituted the global nature of the two study conditions. During the recognition memory tests, participants were presented with distractors that were either consistent or inconsistent with the global nature of the study environment. Five-year-old children did not engage in plausibility-based rejections in either the rhyme or category condition, whereas children 7 years of age and older engaged in plausibility-based rejections in the rhyme condition. However, it was not until children were 12 years old that they engaged in plausibility-based rejections in the category condition. Such data demonstrate global gist to be necessary but insufficient for children to reject recognition test items on the basis of their plausibility.

The present research examined the influence of prior knowledge on children's free recall, cued recall, recognition memory, and source memory judgments for a series of similar real-life events. Forty children (5-12 years old) attended 4 thematic birthday parties and were later interviewed about the events that transpired during the parties using the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development protocol. Of the events, half were generic in that they could have occurred at any birthday party, and half were specific to the theme of the party. Older children demonstrated more evidence of using gist-based information to guide their memory performance than did younger children. However, younger children were able to use global gist to inform their source memory judgments, qualifying past word-learning research.

Counterintuitive age increases have been reported for the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) false memory illusion. The current theoretical explanation of this effect assumes that it is due to age increases in spontaneous interconnection of DRM list words' meanings. To test this explanation, 11-year-olds and young adults studied DRM lists under conditions that (a) encouraged them to form such meaning-based connections or (b) discouraged them from doing so. In line with the explanation, the usual developmental increase in false memory disappeared in the first condition but was preserved in the second condition. Also in line with the explanation, conjoint recognition analyses revealed that encouraging participants to form meaning connections increased their reliance on gist-based similarity judgments.

The DRM paradigm was used to examine the role of global gist extraction in producing false memories in children and adults. First-graders, third-graders, and adults watched a videotape of a woman reading seven DRM lists, and then took a recognition memory test. Blocked (vs random) presentation and instructions to attend to the theme of lists were manipulated to enhance gist processing. In the first experiment, blocked presentation increased false recognition relative to random presentation in adults but not in first-graders or third-graders. In the second experiment, instructions to attend to list themes increased false recognition in third-graders and not in adults or first-graders. The results suggest a developmental pattern in which children become more adept at global gist extraction as they get older. These results are consistent with fuzzy trace theory's prediction of better gist processing as children grow older.

The present experiments test predictions of dual process models with regards to recollection rejection using a model called phantom ROC. Participants studied pictures and then took a recognition test in which they were presented with targets (i.e., the exact picture presented), related lures (i.e., the same object but from a different angle), and unrelated lures (i.e., objects that had not been shown). For each item, participants answered both standard recognition and meaning recognition questions. In Experiment 1 participants studied pictures under either full attention or divided attention. In Experiment 2 some participants were told that no object was shown twice (i.e., mutual exclusivity instructions), while others were told that both camera angles might have been shown for some objects (no mutual exclusivity instructions). The present experiments provide three converging measures, all of which are consistent with dual process models that propose a recollection rejection mechanism.

This special issue of the journal Memory is devoted to an investigation of those mechanisms by which memory is edited for inaccuracies and inconsistencies. In the past 20 years false memories have ...

The present research examined the nature of autobiographical memory event clusters. Specifically we were interested in the interplay between the content and organisation of autobiographical memory with retrieval in determining the similarity of event memories across time. Using an event cueing procedure, clusters of related event memories were generated. Participants sorted these events into meaningful groups after a delay of several weeks. The results suggest that participants' ability to perform this sorting task is dependent on their ability to reinstate the retrieval context. Further our results suggest that event clusters are chains of related event memories as opposed to clusters of interrelated event memories.

Two diary studies investigated the prevalence of memory conjunction errors for real‐life events. In both studies, participants completed detailed diary pages over the course of several weeks. Participants in both diary studies committed memory conjunction errors on a later recognition memory test. In the second diary study participants also made remember/know judgements. For a large proportion of their memory conjunction errors participants indicated that they “remembered” the event occurring in that context. These diary studies demonstrate that memory conjunction errors do occur for autobiographical memories, and these errors can seem compelling.