ABSTRACT Working memory is a robust predictor of children's mathematics achievement, yet the mechanisms underlying this association remain insufficiently understood. Drawing on theoretical accounts, the present study tested whether fluency, both domain‐specific (math) and cross‐domain (reading), mediates the longitudinal relation between working memory and later math performance. Participants were 536 students followed from third through sixth grade. Working memory was assessed in third grade; math and reading fluency were measured repeatedly across fourth and fifth grade; and mathematics achievement was assessed in sixth grade. We found that math fact fluency fully mediated the relation between working memory and later math achievement, eliminating the direct effect of working memory when it was included in the model. There was no effect for reading. These findings clarify how working memory contributes to mathematical development by highlighting domain‐specific math fluency as a key longitudinal pathway linking working memory to later mathematics achievement.
ABSTRACT Retrieval practice and elaborative encoding typically improve memory retention, although their effects on vocabulary learning remain unclear. We address this issue in two classroom experiments wherein sixth‐grade children performed three study‐practice sessions to learn pseudoword‐word associations through retrieval practice, sentence generation, and copy. In a final cued‐recall test, the pseudowords served as cues for the words. In Experiment 1, retrieval practice was followed by immediate feedback and produced greater retention than sentence generation, while both produced greater retention than copy. In Experiment 2, feedback was removed and retrieval practice and sentence generation produced indistinguishable effects, although both outperformed copy. A dictation task included in Experiment 2 showed that orthographic performance did not moderate the learning effects. Taken together, these results indicate that retrieval practice and sentence generation are beneficial for teaching vocabulary to middle‐school children with diverse orthographic skills, and that feedback may boost the positive effects of retrieval practice.
Autobiographical memory is affected by Alzheimer's dementia and depression in old age. We suggest that cognitive decline in Alzheimer's dementia affects both the life narrative construction of personal stability and change, whereas the decline of vitality in depression affects only the construction of change, but not stability of personal identity. Elderly adults with Alzheimer's dementia ( N = 21), major depression ( N = 20), and healthy controls ( N = 20) did not differ in age ( m age = 76.9 years, range 65–94), gender (33 women), or education (mean years = 12.0) narrated their entire lives and provided turning point and self‐defining memory narratives. Individuals with Alzheimer's dementia were indeed affected both in indicators of stability and change. Individuals with depression produced more negative life narratives but unexpectedly did not differ from healthy controls in narrative indicators of personal change. Possibly, the expected reduction of personal change in life stories is limited to very severe depression in younger adults.
ABSTRACT Quizzing before (pretesting) or after (posttesting) studying is effective for learning, but via different underlying mechanisms: Posttests require students to actively recall information; pretests highlight knowledge gaps about the material. Instructional videos allow for studying these strategies because, unlike text‐based materials, they are generally delivered at a fixed pace. Hence, this study investigates when pretesting, posttesting, and corrective feedback are most effective when learning from instructional video. Employing a between‐subjects design, 223 secondary school students watched a video and completed no quiz (control) or a quiz before (pretest) or after (posttest) viewing, with half of them receiving immediate feedback. Students' retention performance and self‐regulated learning (monitoring and regulation) were assessed. Results showed that quizzing enhanced learning from instructional video only for quizzed items and primarily when incorrect responses were followed by feedback. Quizzing improved regulation but not monitoring. These findings underscore the importance of carefully implementing quizzes in video‐based instruction.
ABSTRACT Lie detection research has increasingly turned to artificial intelligence, yet the application of large language models (LLMs) remains underexplored for transcribed oral narratives. We compared five LLMs (Gemini‐3‐flash, Gemini‐3‐pro, Deepseek‐v4‐flash, GPT‐5.6‐luna, and Grok‐4) in classifying truthful and deceptive statements from interview transcripts of oral travel narratives collected from 95 Chinese‐speaking participants. Guided by Criteria‐Based Content Analysis (CBCA), Reality Monitoring (RM), and the Verifiability Approach (VA), theory‐driven prompts instructed models to score five narrative cues before making binary veracity judgments. Gemini‐3‐flash achieved the highest accuracy (74.74%, AUC = 0.76) with 81.63% sensitivity and 67.39% specificity, and stable repeated‐run performance. For this optimal model, unusual/superfluous details served as the sole significant predictor of objective veracity even after controlling for text length. LLMs can detect deception above chance but show large performance heterogeneity. Independent human coding, cross‐cultural replications, and adversarial robustness testing are needed before real‐world deployment.
