The influence of encoding and strategic knowledge on children's choices among serial recall strategies.

This study examined how encoding and strategy knowledge influence 5- to 9-yr-olds' choices among serial recall procedures. The 7- and 9-yr-olds encoded contiguity relations within lists of numbers more consistently than did the 5-yr-olds, and encoding was related to their strategy choices. Presentation of lists with striking contiguity relations led 5-yr-olds to encode the contiguity relations more consistently and to alter their strategy choices accordingly. The 5-yr-olds' more consistent encoding of the contiguity relations, but not their strategy choices, transferred to another type of list. Thus, encoding of relations within the lists was not sufficient to guarantee that the encoding would influence strategy choices. A model of strategy choice that was developed in the context of arithmetic was used to explain the developmental differences in adaptiveness of strategy choices on a task on which the individual items were unfamiliar. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)