Successful active learning has often been quantified with respect to either the efficiency of information search or the accuracy of subsequent recall. In this article, we explored the hypothesis that children's memory is influenced by the types of information search strategies they implement, which may emphasize different aspects of the task…

The use of a verbal rehearsal strategy (repeating the items to be remembered to oneself in serial order) has been identified as a key factor in explaining working memory (WM) development. However, the debate remains open with regard to the age at which children are able to use it, and the actual benefits of using such a strategy. Numerous…

Although visuospatial short-term memory tasks have been found to engage more executive resources than do their phonological counterparts, it remains unclear whether this is due to intrinsic differences between the tasks or differences in participants' experience with them. The authors found 11-year-olds' performances on both visual short-term and…

Children who were 4 to 8 years of age were asked to perform a sort-recall task where only half of the items had to be studied and remembered. Following a baseline trial, children were assigned to 1 of 3 groups and were prompted to use either a sorting or a clustering strategy (experimental groups) or were not prompted at all (control group).…

This longitudinal study was designed to (a) examine changes in children's deliberate memory across the 1st grade; (b) characterize the memory-relevant aspects of their classrooms; and (c) explore linkages between the children's performance and the language their teachers use in instruction. To explore contextual factors that may facilitate the…

Three experiments examined kindergartners' and second graders' retention in the context of two distinctiveness manipulations, the von Restorff and bizarre imagery paradigms. Results showed that: older children retained more information from lists of pictures or interactive images over 3 weeks than younger; younger children failed to benefit from…

The authors used microgenetic methods in 2 experiments to examine children's and adults' progress from initial attempts at spelling nonwords to later direct memory retrieval of the spellings. Participants repeatedly spelled nonwords presented in computerized, dictated-word spelling tests over several weeks. Following each spelling, participants…

Investigated external memory strategies of typical 7-, 9-, 11-, and 17-year olds and 11- and 17-year olds with mild mental retardation using tasks allowing direct comparison of self-report and strategy observed. Found strong positive correlations between frequency of reported and observed strategy use. Self-reports were accurate but not always…

Systematically varied the day-night task requiring children to say "night" to a sun picture and "day" to a moon picture to investigate why young children typically fail the task. Found that reducing memory load did not help performance. Reducing inhibitory demand by requiring an unrelated response or inserting a delay between…

Use of strategies to eliminate interference from irrelevant information in memory was investigated for 11-, 15-, and 18-year-olds. A directed forgetting paradigm was introduced. Results suggest that 11-year-olds use adequate selective remembering strategy, but not selective rehearsal: most 15- and 18-year-olds did. (Author/DST)