The nature of the childhood development of immediate recall has been difficult to determine. There could be a developmental increase in either the number of chunks held in working memory or the use of grouping to make the most of a constant capacity. In 3 experiments with children in the early elementary school years and adults, we show that…

Two experiments examined 4- to 11-year-olds' and adults' performance (N = 350) on two variants of a Stroop-like card task: the "day-night task" (say "day" when shown a moon and "night" when shown a sun) and a new "happy-sad task" (say "happy" for a sad face and "sad" for a happy face). Experiment 1 featured colored cartoon drawings. In Experiment…

Two studies examined recognition memory for pictures in elementary school children and adults. Photographs were used which showed either single objects or multi-object scenes and distractors which differed from targets in that an element had been added, an original element moved, or the vantage point changed. (Author/JMB)

Investigates children's understanding of combined effects of different variables influencing memory. Preschoolers, second graders, fourth graders, and adults predicted how many items a depicted character could recall in several memory situations that were produced by factorially crossing three levels of "items to-be-remembered" with…

Children in grades 1 and 4 and adults were given instruction to image or to verbalize a sentence in order to study a stimulus provided aurally. Both types of instruction enhanced memory, but results indicate the greater requirements for subject-generated mediation to some degree penalized younger subjects and benefited older ones. (GO)

After presenting a brief description of the principles of a story grammar, some experimental results are summarized to illustrate the power of story schemata in controlling recall. Specially constructed versions of four stories were used with second, fourth, and sixth graders and in a second experiment with adults. One version of each story was…

Provides direct evidence of developmental differences in the processing of item-specific information, discussing how these differences affect recognition as well as recall performance in second graders, fifth graders, and college adults. Results suggest that retention varies as a result of the degree to which children differ from adults in…

Three experiments compared congenitally blind and sighted adults and children on paired-associate, free-recall, and imaging tasks presumed to involve visual imagery in memory. In all three, blind subjects' performances were remarkably similar to the sighted. Results challenge previous explanations of performance such as Paivio's (1971). (Author/RD)

The purpose of this study was to investigate the development of organizational processes for both verbal and spatial stimulus materials within an information processing framework. Children in grades 2 and 4 and adults were tested for their ability to report letter strings reflecting various orders of approximation to English and various dot…

Experiments assessed free recall performance as a function of lag across a broad range of elementary school students in grades one, three, and six and tested the hypothesis that repeating an item facilitated memory performance to the extent that each repetition was encoded differently, thus creating more ways to retrieve. (RH)

Specific comparisons for a categorized set of items indicated that recall of detailed drawings and outlines was superior to recall of words. For an uncategorized set, outlines were recalled significantly better than pictures and both were recalled better than words. (Author/PN)

This report contains brief descriptions of 37 published and unpublished works and ongoing studies produced by a project designed to investigate the ways in which both children and adults comprehend and remember connected discourse. Among the topics of the published works, which include articles, book chapters, and a book, are the following: story…

Investigates the relationship of reading ability and age to children's recall of expository text after reading and analyzes children's sensitivity to text structure. (MKM)

Assessed developments in the theory of mind suggested by changes in the organization of cognitive verb extensions during elementary school years. Found three major changes with development: increased understanding of the role of memory in input functions, increased interrelatedness of memory- and comprehension-related verbs, and increased…

The purpose of this study was to explore how children use location and distance cues to reproduce movements as compared with adults. Subjects were three groups of children, aged 6, 8, and 10, and one group of adults. A linear slide was used by the blindfolded subjects to indicate one of two experimenter-defined stops. Distance and location were…