Lexical memory in poor and normal readers: Developmental differences in the use of category cues.

Examined whether differences between poor and normal reading children on lexical memory tasks may be attributed to semantic development, using 80 2nd and 6th graders. Ss were presented with 4 lists of taxonomic categories and were asked to recall items under (a) noncued and random conditions, with Ss instructed to recall as many items as possible and (b) cued and blocked conditions, with Ss told to recall items in a category. All Ss performed better with category cues. Group differences on category recall were more reliable at Grade 6, suggesting that facility in accessing taxonomic categories may differentiate poor and normal readers more reliably at older age levels. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's generation and communication of mnemonic organizational strategies.

Using a series of alternating sort/recall trials, whether 108 1st, 3rd, and 6th graders' experience with categorically related items would facilitate their subsequent organization and recall of low-associated items was explored. Results indicate that 3rd graders exposed to the categorized materials recalled more low-associated items and demonstrated greater organization in sorting and recall than did 3rd graders with previous experience with low-associated materials. Sixth graders' performance with low-associated materials was not affected by their previous experience. Following the memory task, each S provided answers to a series of metamemory questions and then instructed a 1st-grade child in how to perform the memory task. The instructions given to the 1st graders, as well as the performance of these younger children, reflected the older children's differential experience with taxonomic vs low-associated materials. (21 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's encoding of taxonomic classes and subclasses.

Investigated children's spontaneous encoding of words into taxonomic classes differing in degree of specificity. 144 children in grades 2-3 and 96 6th graders were tested on a memory task in which each of 4 trials involved presentation of 2 words to be remembered, a distracting task (naming colors) for 15 sec, and recall of the 2 words for 10 sec. Ss in each grade were tested in 1 of 6 conditions that resulted from combining 2 variables; condition (control and experimental) and categories of words (animal/plant, bird/mammal, and tree/flower). The finding that children encoded words into 2 levels of taxonomic class is consistent with the conclusion that the locus of developmental differences in free recall is in children's inability to retrieve rather than in an inability to store information related to taxonomic classes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effect of contextual organization on spatial memory of middle-aged and older women.

Examined the memory performance of 20 women aged 31–59 yrs and 20 aged 65–85. Ss reconstructed spatial arrays, replacing miniature objects in either a contextually organized panorama or a noncontextually organized bank of cubicles. Performance of the middle-aged Ss did not differ between the 2 tasks. Older Ss performed as well as middle-aged Ss in the panorama task, but in the cubicles task their scores were lower than in the panorama task and lower than those of the younger Ss in the cubicles task. Results support the conclusion that in a task that allows the use of existing contextual organization as a memory aid, age differences in memory performance disappear. Age differences may be limited to tasks that remove previously learned relationships between items (as in recall of lists of unrelated words), requiring Ss to invent an organizational structure to facilitate recall. Though such tasks predominate in research, they probably do not represent the memory problems met in everyday life, especially by older adults. (30 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The facilitation of long-term memory improvement and operative development.

J. Piaget and B. Inhelder (1973) have reported that children's memories for pictures or events improve between early (1-wk) and late (several-month) recall sessions in conjunction with operative growth. Using the concept of verticality, the present study investigated (a) if an intervening operative training task would increase memory improvements, and (b) if exposure to the memory stimulus per se would enhance later operative performance. 97 3rd graders were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 groups—with or without operative training and with or without a memory task. At the end of the school year, all Ss were tested for operative level. The trained group showed significantly more memory progressions and fewer regressions than the untrained group on 1 of 2 memory stimuli. On the 2nd stimulus, performance was consistently high across children and recall sessions, and thus no differences were found as a function of training. Participation in the memory task enhanced later operative performance. Implications for Piagetian memory research are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Developmental and population comparisons of taxonomic and thematic organization in free recall.

Assessed taxonomic and thematic clustering in free recall in 240 7- and 10-yr-olds from Black and White and low- and middle-SES backgrounds. Materials were pictures that were cross classifiable by taxonomic and thematic categories. A free study condition, in which Ss studied the pictures any way they wished, tested the hypothesis that taxonomic clustering would increase with age and thematic clustering would decrease with age. This condition also tested A. R. Jensen's (see record 1969-09740-001) prediction of population differences in clustering and recall. Two conditions were also included that determined whether constraining Ss to sort taxonomically or thematically during the study period would raise recall and clustering. Results for the free study condition indicate that recall and taxonomic clustering increased with age but thematic clustering was low for both ages. This pattern of performance did not vary with ethnicity or SES. The constrained taxonomic condition raised taxonomic clustering for all children but had no effect on recall for either age group. The constrained thematic condition generally raised thematic clustering for all Ss, but the beneficial effect of the constrained thematic condition on recall was limited to the 10-yr-olds. (26 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of experimentally imposed noise on task performance of Black children attending day care centers near elevated subway trains.

Investigated whether an experimentally imposed 80 db (A) noise differentially affected the psychomotor, serial memory words and pictures, incidental memory, visual recall, paired associates, perceptual learning, and coding performance of 109 predominantly Black, low socioeconomic status (SES) 5-yr-old children attending daycare centers near and far from elevated subways. Ss were administered psychomotor tasks at the beginning and end of a noisy or quiet play condition and cognitive and perceptual tasks during a noisy or quiet test condition. Factorial analyses revealed that only psychomotor performance was significantly impaired by the 80 db (A) noise. A significant interaction between daycare center environmental noise level and test was found on the coding task, with Ss from relatively noisy daycare centers performing best under noisy test conditions and their counterparts under quiet conditions. Findings suggest that noise does not have a universal effect on children's performance, but the effects vary as a function of the nature of the task and previous exposure to noise. (39 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Knowing what to remember and forget: a developmental study of cue memory in intentional forgetting

These experiments are the first to investigate children's encoding and use of information about a memory cue in Bjork's (1972) intentional forgetting task. In Experiment 1, children in Grades 2, 4, and 6 and college students were given cues to either remember or forget after the presentation of each picture. Recall and recognition tests of pictures and cues followed. The procedure in Experiment 2 was identical to that in Experiment 1 except that the list of presentation pictures was altered for some children (Grades 3 and 4) and adolescents (Grades 8 and 9) so that remember and forget cues were associated with particular taxonomic categories. In Experiment 3, the testing component was modified so that children (Grades 2, 3, and 4) and college students were asked to recall only the cue associated with each picture. The results indicated that (1) children as young as second graders encode the cue associated with each picture, although to a lesser extent than do college students, (2) much improvement in intentional forgetting is still occurring during adolescence, (3) only adults adequately cluster their recall by cue, (4) associating remember and forget cues with items from different categories does not increase the differentiation between cues, and (5) eliminating picture recall and recognition has minimal effects on the magnitude of cue judgments. These results suggest that children's difficulties on intentional forgetting tasks stem, at least in part, from their poorer encoding of information about whether an item should be remembered or forgotten.     

Children's concurrent use of rehearsal and organizational strategies.

This study examined whether children could benefit from the simultaneous use of two mnemonic strategies. In Experiment 1, 3rd and 6th graders were taught to use the rehearsal and organizational strategies of same- or different-aged peers. At both ages, Ss who used developmentally advanced techniques recalled more than those who sorted and rehearsed like younger children; moreover, use of both efficient strategies together increased recall additively. In Experiment 2, 3rd graders rehearsed in any way they wished while learning taxonomically related or unrelated items. With each type of materials, 4 groups differed in whether the items were left visible, in whether Ss were asked to sort, and, if so, in whether they were instructed to sort to "help them remember" or on the basis of meaning. Those Ss instructed to sort showed higher recall and more active rehearsal, regardless of type of sort instructions or items. Thus, the use of one strategy may elicit effective use of another. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Development of strategies for recall and recognition.

40 kindergartners, 42 3rd graders, and 40 5th graders (CA's 5 yrs, 5 mo; 8 yrs, 3 mo; and 12 yrs, 4 mo, respectively) viewed 30 pictures of familiar objects, and then their free recall of the object names and their recognition of the original pictures were tested. The recognition test included pairing each picture with another similar picture of the same object. Half the Ss in each age group were prepared for recall with a strategy known to improve it in adults, and half were prepared for recognition with a strategy known to improve recognition in adults. Children encoded the stimuli differentially in accordance with the expected memory task and retrieved different stored information for each task. Both free recall and picture recognition memory improved with age. The recall strategy improved free recall performance at all ages, but the recognition strategy improved recognition performance only at the oldest age tested. (16 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Processing relational and item-specific information: Effects of aging and division of attention.

64 young adults (aged 18–21 yrs) and 32 older Ss (aged 65–83 yrs) encoded items from categorizable lists under incidental learning conditions. Two orienting tasks were used: a category sorting task and a pleasantness rating task. The number of items/category was varied (between 2 and 14) within each list. In addition, 24 young adults performed the orienting tasks while simultaneously engaged in an attention-demanding secondary task (divided-attention condition). Recall declined with both age and division of attention, while recall clustering was greatest for the older Ss and least for the young divided-attention Ss. The effects of category size and orienting task on recall did not vary across groups. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effect of interest on attentional shift, recognition, and recall in young children.

Observed the interests of preschoolers through patterns of attention in the classroom and examined how interest affected their attentional shift, recognition, and recall. Ss were younger and older preschoolers, 8 2.9–3.5 yr olds and 8 3.6–4.2 yr olds, respectively. Ss' interests were assessed with 6 videotapes of each S during free play over a 3-wk period. In Study 1, interests were naturalistically identified from the tapes, using a coding procedure. In Study 2, using the same Ss, interests were related to performance in 3 experimental tasks assessing the direction of attentional shift to items in the peripheral visual field, the level of recognition of previously encountered pictures, and recall of previously presented objects. Findings show that younger Ss manifested a considerably weaker recency effect than did older Ss. Overall, Ss' interests were strong, relatively well focused, and individually variable. S's particular interests appeared to be a powerful determinant of the direction of attentional shift, level of recognition, and likelihood of recall. It is suggested that interests reflect the knowledge/value systems that preschoolers bring to the task of organizing experience, memory, and action. (20 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The influence of levels of processing on recall from working memory and delayed recall tasks.

Recent research in working memory has highlighted the similarities involved in retrieval from complex span tasks and episodic memory tasks, suggesting that these tasks are influenced by similar memory processes. In the present article, the authors manipulated the level of processing engaged when studying to-be-remembered words during a reading span task (Experiment 1) and an operation span task (Experiment 2) in order to assess the role of retrieval from secondary memory during complex span tasks. Immediate recall from both span tasks was greater for items studied under deep processing instructions compared with items studied under shallow processing instructions regardless of trial length. Recall was better for deep than for shallow levels of processing on delayed recall tests as well. These data are consistent with the primary-secondary memory framework, which suggests that to-be-remembered items are displaced from primary memory (i.e., the focus of attention) during the processing phases of complex span tasks and therefore must be retrieved from secondary memory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Developmental differences in organization and recall: Training in the use of organizational techniques.

Used an alternating sort-recall procedure in 3 experiments to train 204 elementary school children in the use of organizational techniques as memory aids. All Ss sorted a group of words into 2–7 categories, and some Ss were required to learn the sorting patterns generated by adults. In Exp I, the semantic sophistication of a S's sorting style predicted recall performance. Further, the tendency to improve memory performance as a result of being constrained to adult sorting patterns varied with age; constrained 5th graders significantly improved their recall, whereas the recall of 3rd and 7th grade Ss was not affected by this training. However, more detailed organizational training in Exp II facilitated the recall of 3rd graders. In Exp II, it was found that the constraining procedure was not necessary for facilitation to be observed. Rather, instructions to group words on the basis of meaning were sufficient to produce improved recall. Further, improvements in sorting style accompanied all significant changes in recall. Findings are discussed in terms of a discrepancy between the information which a child has in permanent memory and that which he uses spontaneously in the context of a memorization task. The importance of input organization as a mediating factor in memory performance and development is suggested. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Rehearsal training and developmental differences in memory.

To examine the relation between age-related changes in the activity of rehearsal and corresponding changes in recall, 96 2nd and 6th graders were trained in a variety of rehearsal techniques in an overt rehearsal free recall task. Consistent with previous work, developmental differences in the number of items rehearsed together were observed when Ss were given no particular training. These rehearsal differences were related to corresponding changes in the recall of initially presented items. The recall of 2nd-grade noninstructed Ss was similar to that of Ss instructed to rehearse only 1 or 2 items together; the serial position curves of these groups indicated no primacy effects. In contrast, the recall of Ss who rehearsed several items together was similar to that of noninstructed 6th graders, with significant primacy effects being observed in these conditions. Second-grade Ss were able to adopt this active rehearsal strategy and to continue using it on a transfer task. The facilitative effects of active rehearsal were mediated neither by priority in recall given to early list items nor by enhanced subjective organization. Results are discussed in terms of multistore models of memory. (26 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Use of relational and item-specific information in remembering by older and younger adults.

The applicability to older adults of predictions from the integrated memory model, that optimal memory results from concurrent availability of relational and item-specific information, was assessed. In Experiment 1, older adults (M?=?69 years) encoded related or unrelated words using rating, sorting, or both tasks. Using both tasks produced better recall than either separate task. Rating facilitated recall for related items, but sorting did not facilitate unrelated items. In Experiment 2, younger (M?=?20) and older (M?=?74) adults sorted or rated lists comprising categories of varying sizes. Young adults' free recall conformed to predictions, but older adults again showed facilitation mainly from rating larger categories. The stronger effects for younger adults imply that specific combinations of encoding and retrieval manipulations and materials must be considered in predicting older adults' performance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Young children's knowledge of the relative difficulty of recognition and recall memory tasks.

16 kindergarten and 16 1st-grade children were told stories about twins who were given recognition and recall memory tasks; Ss judged which of the twins remembered more of identical sets of to-be-remembered items. Contrary to the implications of other recent work, it was found that a number of Ss gave clear evidence that they believe recognition tasks to be easier than recall tasks. It is argued that this item of acquired metamemory may be important in the later development of the retrieval strategy of converting recall tasks into recognition tasks. (2 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reading, memory, and metacognition.

Investigated relations among reading skills, metareading (knowledge about reading), memory, and metamemory (knowledge about memory) as they relate to reading ability (good vs poor readers), operativity, and grade level. 40 2nd graders (aged 7.25–9.83 yrs) and 40 4th graders (aged 9.42–22.00 yrs) were interviewed to assess the reading–memory variables. Significant but low correlations were obtained between metareading and reading, metamemory and memory, metareading and metamemory, and reading and memory. Significant effects of operativity were revealed on all dependent measures. Operative Ss had higher scores on the metareading and metamemory tasks, read at higher levels, and remembered more items on the memory tasks than did nonoperative Ss. Effects of grade level were revealed on most dependent measures. Fourth-grade Ss received higher scores on the metareading and metamemory tasks and read at higher levels than did 2nd-grade Ss. An interaction between operativity and grade level revealed that operative 2nd-grade and both groups of 4th-grade Ss made fewer total reading errors than did nonoperative 2nd-grade Ss. The effects of operativity, experience, and metacognition on reading and memory skills are discussed. (43 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Generalization from categorical memory tasks to prose by learning disabled adolescents.

Investigated how 60 learning disabled ([LD] aged 12 yrs to 14 yrs 5 mo) and 20 age-matched nondisabled (NLD) Ss would transfer the use of 4 study rules from instructed materials (pictures) to a prose recall task. Four phases spread over a 3-wk period were involved: pretest, informational phase (2 lessons), individualized training (3 lessons), and posttest. Results show that LDs performed poorly relative to NLD peers at pretest on categorical picture and prose recall tasks. 20 LD Ss who received rule-only instruction and 20 LD Ss who received rule-plus-prose examples instruction surpassed 20 LD Ss in the control condition at posttest on the picture task in rule use and in recall. On the prose task, a majority of the instructed LD Ss demonstrated transfer of the instructed rules. As a group, the instructed LD Ss no longer differed observably from NLD Ss in recall or in the strategies they employed to study and to retrieve. The clinical view that LD Ss are characterized by a failure to generalize was not supported by these findings. (28 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)