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…

There is increasing evidence for an association between both serial order short-term memory (STM) and the long-term learning (LTL) of serial order information and reading abilities. In this developmental study, we examined the hypothesis that STM for serial order supports online grapheme-to-phoneme conversion processes during the initial stages of…

Executing actions in a specific order is a critical component of many action sequences that children must acquire, the majority of which are learned through observation and imitation of others. Although a wealth of evidence indicates that children can process and represent temporal order in memory, relatively little is known about the development…

Serial-order short-term memory (STM), as opposed to item STM, has been shown to be very consistently associated with lexical learning abilities in cross-sectional study designs. This study investigated longitudinal predictions between serial-order STM and vocabulary development. Tasks maximizing the temporary retention of either serial-order or…

To evaluate the hypothesis that memories are related to operative levels, children were shown pictures involving seriation, horizontality, and verticality and were asked to reproduce them 1 week and 5 months later. Although memories and operative levels did correlate, the relations were quantitatively weak and were undermined by serious…

In an experiment, 13.5-month-old children were tested on 2- and 3-act sequences depicting familiar and novel events. Using elicited imitation, they reliably recalled the sequences in the correct temporal order. In a second experiment, 11.5 month olds accurately recalled 2-act sequences depicting familiar and novel events. (BC)

Investigates the role of operative schemes in explaining older children's superior memory on past Piagetian memory tasks. Contrasts were made between the performance of normal v learning disabled grade school children, and between preschool children who either possessed or lacked seriation schemes. (Author/SS)