Development: Research reports
A summary of these findings is available here.
Memory strategies in young children
Aschermann, E., Dannenberg, U. & Schulz, A. 1998. Photographs as retrieval cues for children. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 12, 55-66.
Finding: Photographs, frequently used as cues to remembering in adults, also appear to be effective with children as young as three.
This study looked at the value of photographs as retrieval cues for young children. Fifty-seven children(3,6-7, and 8 years old) participated in a fishing game. Ten days later the children were questioned about the game. Those children who were shown relevant photos recalled more details than those who were simply verbally reminded of the game. Appropriate props also improved accuracy of recall.
Bjorklund, D.F., Miller, P.H., Coyle, T.R. & Slawinski, J.L. 1997. Instructing Children to Use Memory Strategies: Evidence of Utilization Deficiencies in Memory Training Studies. Developmental Review, 17, 411-441.
Finding: When teaching young children learning strategies, care should be taken to keep it simple. Simply providing instructions is preferable than providing both instructions and a rationale.
The term "utilization deficiencies" refers to the use of an effective strategy without any improvement in performance. Thus, if a child dutifully rehearsed items without being able to remember them any better than items she had not rehearsed, this would be a deficiency in utilization.
Utilization deficiencies appear to be common among children. They are more common, unsurprisingly, with younger children, and more common when strategy training has included multiple procedures rather than a single procedure.
Manion, V. & Alexander, J.M. 1997. The Benefits of Peer Collaboration on Strategy Use, Metacognitive Causal Attribution, and Recall. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 67, 268-289.
Finding: Working in groups with children who understand and use memory strategies can help children with poorer metacognitive skills increase their understanding and strategy use.
Metacognition - knowledge and understanding of your own cognitive processes - is increasingly being recognized as important in determining whether or not you can use cognitive strategies effectively. This study looked at the benefits of children with different levels of metacognitive understanding working together.
Children were tested as to their knowledge about the effectiveness of a sorting strategy, and then placed in small groups. These groups were given instructions to explicitly discuss their strategies. It was found that children with a lower metacognitive understanding improved their understanding and strategy use as a result of being placed with children with a higher level of understanding.
Harnishfeger, K.K. & Pope, R.S. 1996. Intending to Forget: The Development of Cognitive Inhibition in Directed Forgetting. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 62, 292-315.
Finding: Intentional forgetting is a learned skill, which children acquire gradually, and which is not fully acquired by age 10.
Although we tend to decry forgetting, and regard it as a failure of memory, forgetting is an important ability. Not everything is worth remembering. Certainly we don't want to remember everything all at once!
Part of efficient remembering involves ignoring information that is irrelevant. It is thought that "directed ignoring" plays an important role in controlling what goes into working memory. Interestingly, it has been suggested that one of the reasons for memory problems in old age is a diminished ability to ignore irrelevant information.
This research looks at directed ignoring in children. First, third, and fifth graders and adults were given a "forget" or "remember" cue midway through the presentation of a list of words. At recall, the subjects were asked either to remember all the words (even the ones they had been instructed to forget) or to remember only to-be-remembered words.
It was found that the children were less able than the adults to forget the to-be-forgotten words. The results suggested that the ability to intentionally inhibit recall of irrelevant information improves gradually over the elementary school years, but is not fully mature by fifth grade. A further experiment checked that the different results were due to differences in memory rather than a failure to understand the instructions.
Oyen, A. & Bebko, J.M. 1996.The Effects of Computer Games and Lesson Contexts on Children's Mnemonic Strategies. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 62, 173-189.
Finding: Learning in the context of a computer game may be more difficult for young children than in the context of a more structured lesson. Interest is higher, but the complexity of the game (number of distracting details) may hinder learning.
This study looked at the effect of embedding a memory task in the context of a computer game. Four to seven year olds participated in one of two computer games and a more formal "lesson" condition. While the game context appeared to stimulate much more rehearsal, this was because the rehearsal was more overt. The amount of rehearsal when both overt and covert rehearsal were included, was similar for both the lesson and the game condition.
There was, as expected, an increase in rehearsal with age - at each age level the number of rehearsers nearly doubled. Rehearsers did, of course, recall more items than those children who did not rehearse.
Regardless of rehearsal, recall of items experienced in the game context was less than that for items experienced in a more formal "lesson". The games were more interesting for the children, but the multiplicity of goals and distractions in the games may have made the task more difficult.
Event memory in young children
Reese, E. & Brown N. 2000. Reminiscing and recounting in the preschool years. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 14, 1-17.
Finding: Parents can help their child remember events that have happened to them by reminiscing with them (recalling with them events that they have shared) and encouraging them to recall details about unshared events.
Talk about past events can be classified as either reminiscing (discussingshared experiences) or recounting (discussing unshared experiences).
This study looked at reminiscing and recounting between preschoolers and their
mothers. Forty children between three and five participated in the
experiment. It was found that children reported more unique memory
information when they were discussing unshared experiences
(recounting) rather than shared. Mothers who provided morememory information during reminiscing and
asked for more information during recounting had children who reported more unique information about
events.
Buckner, J.P. & Fivush, R. 1998. Gender and self in children's autobiographical narratives. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 12, 407-29.
Finding: Gender differences in conversational style seem to appear at an early age. At age 8, girls' recounting of personal experiences are already more detailed and socially contexted than boys' narratives are.
This study looked at the differences between girls and boys in recounting personal experiences. The children were aged eight, and from a middle-class background. As has tended to be found with adults, it was found that the girls' narratives were longer, more coherent and more detailed than were the boys' narratives. The girls' narratives also tended to mention more people and more emotions, and to be placed in a social context.
Reading skills in young children
Gathercole, S.E., Service, E., Hitch, G.J., Adams, A. & Martin, A.J. 1999. Phonological short-term memory and vocabulary development: furtherevidence on the nature of the relationship. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 13, 65-77.
Finding: The ability of a child to repeat back unfamiliar words is constrained by the capacity of their working memory rather than their ability to articulate the words. The constraining effect of working memory capacity on the ability to learn new words continues into adolescence.
The effect of phonological short-term (working) memory and vocabulary knowledge was explored in two experiments (see Gathercole et al 1994 for a discussion of this effect). In the first experiment, four-year-olds were given various working memory tests (nonword repetition; digit span; nonword recognition). The correlation between working memory capacity and vocabulary knowledge was as strong for the serial recognition task as for the recall-based tests, supporting the view that it is working memory capacity rather than speech output skills which constrain word learning. In the next experiment, the same association betweenmemory capacity and vocabulary knowledge was found to be strong in teenagers, indicating that these working memory constraints remain significant throughout childhood.
>> also see Gathercole et al 1994
Crain-Thoreson, C. 1996. Phonemic Processes in Children's Listening and Reading Comprehension. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 10, 383-401.
Finding: Rhyme appears to be more confusing than other phonemic similarities and can affect how clearly the child remembers what a heard story was about. However recall of verbatim details does not appear to be affected, and the susceptibility of a child to phonemic confusion doesn't appear to affect their reading skill.
Kindergarten and second-grade children were told phonemically confusing stories and second-graders were given phonemically confusing stories to read. It was found that rhymes were more consistently confusing than alliteratives in both the listening and readingtasks at both grade levels. This suggests not only that rhyme is inherently moreconfusing than alliteration, but that similar information is being activated when children listen and when they readsilently.
Both kindergarten and second-grade children showed phonemic confusion in their remembering of the gist of the stories that they heard, but prereaders were less likely than readers to show signs of phonemic confusion in their verbatim recall. However, children's sensitivity to phonemic information did not appear to affect their reading skill.
Gathercole, S.E., Willis, C.S., Baddeley, A.D. & Emslie, H. 1994. The Children's test of Nonword Repetition: a test of phonological working memory. Memory, 2, 103-27.
Finding: The ability of a child to repeat back unfamiliar words is constrained by the capacity of their working memory, and affects their ability to learn new words, as well as the ability to comprehend what they hear or read.
The Children's test of Nonword Repetition (CNRep) involves the child hearing a single novel word-like item, such as "barrazon", and being required to immediately repeat it back. This occurs for 40 such items. Performance on this test is highly correlated with conventional tests of phonological working memory, and it appears that the ability to repeat back unfamiliar words is affected by the capacity of this aspect (the phonological loop) of working memory.
The test is particularly appropriate for young children, as it is a familiar task (young children are of course constantly coming up against unfamiliar words and often try to repeat them) and they usually readily understand what to do.
A number of studies have consistently found poor CNRep scores in children who are poor readers, and very low scores in children who are reading-impaired (such as dyslexics). Adults with various language processing disorders also perform poorly on this test.
Working memory capacity (which varies among individuals) affects many aspects of comprehension and recall. Among normal adults, working memory constraints usually only affect comprehension of particularly long and grammatically complex sentences. Among children, the ability to repeat back unfamiliar words affects both language comprehension and the learning of new words.
References
Aschermann, E., Dannenberg, U. & Schulz, A. 1998. Photographs as retrieval cues for children. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 12, 55-66.
Bjorklund, D.F., Miller, P.H., Coyle, T.R. & Slawinski, J.L. 1997. Instructing Children to Use Memory Strategies: Evidence of Utilization Deficiencies in Memory Training Studies. Developmental Review, 17, 411-441.
Buckner, J.P. & Fivush, R. 1998. Gender and self in children's autobiographical narratives. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 12, 407-29.
Crain-Thoreson, C. 1996. Phonemic Processes in Children's Listening and Reading Comprehension. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 10, 383-401.
Gathercole, S.E., Service, E., Hitch, G.J., Adams, A. & Martin, A.J. 1999. Phonological short-term memory and vocabulary development: furtherevidence on the nature of the relationship. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 13, 65-77.
Gathercole, S.E., Willis, C.S., Baddeley, A.D. & Emslie, H. 1994. The Children's test of Nonword Repetition: a test of phonological working memory. Memory, 2, 103-27.
Harnishfeger, K.K. & Pope, R.S.1996.Intending to Forget: The Development of Cognitive Inhibition in Directed Forgetting. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 62, 292-315.
Manion, V. & Alexander, J.M. 1997. The Benefits of Peer Collaboration on Strategy Use, Metacognitive Causal Attribution, and Recall. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 67, 268-289.
Oyen, A. & Bebko, J.M. 1996.The Effects of Computer Games and Lesson Contexts on Children's Mnemonic Strategies. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 62, 173-189.
Reese, E. & Brown N. 2000. Reminiscing and recounting in the preschool years. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 14, 1-17.