Results from three experiments suggest that attention to context may benefit target recall in situations in which the context can be meaningfully related to the target. Adults seem to be more able to engage in context-interactive processing of stimulus information than are children, who base target selection on perceptual information. (PCB)

The goal of this study was to determine some of the factors that contribute to developmental differences children and adults display when they use cues to retrieve specific memories. (PCB)

Determines some of the reasons for developmental differences in retrieval variability. The critical manipulation involved the use of semantic orienting questions at both acquisition and retrieval; elementary school children (7 and 10 years of age) and adults participated. (Author/CI)

Children were presented with a related-word triplet (horse, pig, cow) with or without accompanying setting, or place, information (farm). Children were later given a retrieval cue from the first two words of the triplet and asked to recall the third word. Found that place information presented at acquisition and retrieval facilitated children's…

Five experiments investigated whether the cued recall of children and adults differed for classified events featuring different category and relation types. Recall for events differed strongly for children and adults. Differences were attributed to properties of the internal structure of event representation in memory. (SKC)

Presents five experiments that examine the ability of first graders, fourth graders, and adults to make causal inferences that explain how an unexpected and inconsistent "outcome" follows from an initial premise in a story. Results indicate that referential and causal coherence are empirically separable and should be distinguished…

This experiment assessed interactions between encoding and retrieval strategies in recall. Three levels of encoding conditions (random, blocked,sort) and three types of retrieval conditions (free, cued, constrained) were examined at three age levels (6, 10, and 18 years). (CM)

Results of five studies suggest that the availability of an object concept in sentences that preceded an unexpected story outcome was a critical determinant of the occurrence of an object inference. The thematic prominence of the object influences the use of the object in an inference. (RH)

Children and adults listened to stories containing an early goal sentence and a later inconsistent outcome. Later object inferences varied with context sentence and title for all ages. Results established that the effects involved maintenance of concept accessibility and that early concept prominence was critical. (BC)

Two experiments, using pictorial or verbal stimuli, were designed to test encoding among young children and adults. In both experiments, results indicated progressively smaller encoding specificity effects with increasing age. Comparisons of recall patterns were conducted to ensure that encoding differences accounted for results. (Author/DB)

Examines the effects of integration complexity on the ability of child and adult listeners to integrate information. Increases in complexity adversely affected children's more than adults' resolution integration. The children's integration performance was affected by theme discontinuity and conferential complexity. (Author/AS)

Second-graders, fifth-graders, and adults participated in an experiment of cued recall for cue-target picture and word pairs. Results suggested that differences in the encoding of both specific and categorical attribute information contribute to developmental recall differences independently of encoding intent and stimulus modality. (Author/CB)

Tests the hypothesis that children's inability to encode item-specific and relational information in episodic events contributes to age differences in recall and recognition. In two experiments, grade school children and college adults were presented with word triplets varying in categorical relatedness. Processing of the item-specific and…

Children's use of contextual discrepancy and stressed intonation to interpret literal form and illocutionary function in the use of ironic utterances was examined in two experiments, each using first- and third-grade children and college-age adults. Results suggest a complex relationship between literal form and illocutionary function in…

Seven experiments examined word triplet recall of second graders, fifth graders, and college adults. Results include findings that successful cued recall in children is more dependent than that of adults on associative constraint provided in an episode and cue, and that children make relatively better use of thematic and subordinate than of…