Recall and recognition performance were compared under three different modes of presentation (written words, black-and-white pictures of objects, and color pictures of objects) for 30 subjects in each of three grade levels (college students, sixth graders, and fourth graders). The results showed a developmental trend of increasing recall performance' with age. Whereas adult performance was significantly affected by mode of presentation (color pictures > black-and-white pictures> written words), no difference was found across presentation modes for the fourth and sixth graders. However, the data also indicated that children do have pictorial and color cues available in memory in a manner very similar to adults. It was suggested that the cognitive structures of children do not utilize this stimulus information.In recent years it has become generally accepted that recall of pictorial stimuli is superior to that of word stimuli. A number of experiments using adult subjects (e.g., Paivio & Yarmey, 1966;Rowe, 1973;Rowe & Paivio, 1971) have supported this assertion. However, the data for children are not as extensive, and the results have been mixed. Ducharme and Fraisse (l965) found that, for 8-year-old children, words were slightly easier to memorize than pictures. Cole, Frankel, and Sharp (1971) reported that children of all ages from 6 through 15 showed greater recall for pictures than for words. Thus, the data available seem to suggest that the word-picture relationship may not · be the same for both children and adults.A smaller number of experiments have investigated the influence of color on the recall of pictures. Paivio and Yarmey (l966) and Paivio, Rogers, and Smythe (l968) reported no Significant difference between color and black-and-white presentations. However, Bousfield, Esterson, and Whitmarsh (l957) found that recall of words plus colored pictures was superior to words plus uncolored pictures, and that recall for both conditions was superior to that of words alone.The purpose of the present study was to examine these word vs. picture and color vs. no-color relationships for both children and adults. METHODA 2 by 3 by 3 (sex by grade level by mode of presentation) factorial design was used, with Mode of Presentation as a withinsubject factor. Recall and recognition performance was compared for 15 males and 15 females in each of three grade levels: college, sixth grade, and fourth grade. The three presentationThe authors acknowledge the valuable assistance of Sylvia G. Montejano in collecting the data. Requests for reprints should be sent to Marilyn A. Borges, Department of Psychology, San Diego State University, San Diego, California 92182. modes were names of objects (in cursive writing), black-andwhite photographs of the objects, and color photographs of the same objects.The presentation items were 30 concrete nouns with a frequency count of at least 11 per million (Thorndike-Lorge, 1944). Three different presentation lists were constructed, each containing the 30 items on slides, lOin each of the ...