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)

A grouping task revealed a chronological progression: color and form determined the 4-year-old children's grouping about equally; form dominated in the 5-year-olds; and 9-year-olds grouped primarily by conceptual attributes. Performance on a memory task showed the developmental shift from color to form to concept, while cued recall showed…

Taxonomic category encoding was studied in 160 second and fourth grade students, both low-socioeconomic status Blacks and middle-class Whites. Three items were displayed sequentially, to be recalled later. The results provided conclusive evidence of the availability of taxonomic encoding categories in the groups sampled. (Author/GDC)

Examined free recall of kindergartners and third and eighth graders. The use of organizational strategies, which was demonstrated by third and eight graders, led to increased performance only for eighth graders. These results suggest a phase in strategy development when production of a strategy results in little benefit in performance. (LB)

The present study investigated the relationship between developmental shifts in the organization of materials and developmental changes in deliberate strategy use. Second- and fourth-grade children were presented with clusterable sort/recall lists representing the factorial combinations of high and low inter-item association and high and low…

Research on 128 children is presented as evidence of the superiority of a new clustering measure (X) over a more traditional "chance clustering" measure (sigma) as a means of organizing material to be learned to facilitate recall. X is shown to meet three criteria for a measure of a developmental process: X is more highly correlated with recall…

Thirty-eight bidialectical rural Hawaiian children participated in a study to determine if they would display clustering in a cued recall task and to explore the possible influence of dialect usage on recall performance. For purposes of the study, "clustering" was defined as the ability of subjects to recall list items by category…

Using cross classifiable pictures, this study assessed taxonomic and thematic clustering in free recall in 240 children, ages seven and ten. The effects of both free and constrained test conditions and developmental, ethnic, and socioeconomic differences, were examined. (BS)

In two different studies the relationships between study time patterns, retrieval time patterns, and clustering were examined. In the first study middle Socioeconomic Status white students in grades 2 through 5 increased their use of the clustering strategy as a function of the organizational nature of the list. List composition facilitated…

Free recall, cued recall, and clustering performance of fourth grade lower socioeconomic black and white children is studied under four conditions of teaching: random presentation, random presentation plus instruction, blocked presentation, and blocked presentation with instruction of categorically related list. Results indicate that both recall…