Developmental trends in item recognition following a verbal discrimination study trial

Abstract

As-e-related changes in the processes mediating verbal discrimination learning were investigated by a procedure in which right, wrong, and new items were tested individually for oldness after a single study trial on right-wrong pairs. Sixth-grade children displayed higher hit rates than fourth-grade children for both right and wrong items, suggesting that increasing age is accompanied by both increasing rehearsal responses to right items and increasing perceptual responses to wrong items. The increase with age in responses to wrong items serves to compensate for the gain in responses to right items, thus accounting for the absence of pronounced age increments in verbal discrimination learning proficiency.