The etiology of individual differences in general verbal ability, verbal learning and letter and category fluency were examined in two independent samples of 9- and 18-year-old twin pairs and their siblings. In both age groups, we observed strong familial resemblance for general verbal ability and moderate familial resemblance for verbal learning, letter and category fluency. All familial resem...

Number facts are commonly assumed to be verbally stored in an associative multiplication fact retrieval network. Prominent evidence for this assumption comes from so-called operand-related errors (e.g., 4 × 6 = 28). However, little is known about the development of this network in children and its relation to verbal and non-verbal memories. In a longitudinal design, we explored elementary schoo...

Children with learning difficulties suffer from working memory (WM) deficits. Yet the specificity of deficits associated with different types of learning difficulties remains unclear. Further research can contribute to our understanding of the nature of WM and the relationship between it and learning difficulties. The current meta-analysis synthesized research on verbal WM and numerical WM amon...

The Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test, which requires the free recall of the same list of 15 unrelated words over 5 trials, was administered to 21 high-functioning adolescents and adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and 21 matched typical individuals. The groups showed similar overall levels of free recall, rates of learning over trials and subjective organisation of their recall. Howeve...

The authors examined the hypothesis that some people are verbal learners and some people are visual learners. They presented a battery of 14 cognitive measures related to the visualizer–verbalizer dimension to 95 college students and then conducted correlational and factor analyses. In a factor analysis, each measure loaded most heavily onto 1 of 4 factors: cognitive style (such as visual–verba...

The neurocognitive and social cognitive correlates of two types of formal thought disorder (i.e., bizarre-idiosyncratic and concrete thinking) were examined in 47 stable outpatients with schizophrenia. Both types of thinking disturbance were related to impairments in verbal learning, intrusions in verbal memory, immediate auditory memory, sustained attention, and social schema knowledge. Distra...

Prior research has shown that skilled problem solvers often demonstrate meaningful links between relevant visual and verbal knowledge components, but little is known about how to support novice learners in connecting visual and verbal information during learning or whether such support will improve learning outcomes. This work explored two methods to support meaningful connections between visua...

Smoking has been associated with both enhanced and impaired cognitive performance; across a variety of domains, but there is limited evidence demonstrating the effects on verbal learning. The current study assessed the effect of smoking and abstinence on verbal learning, immediate memory and retention using the Auditory Verbal Learning Test (AVLT). Three groups: 20 smokers, 20 abstaining smoker...