Do children use different forms of verbal rehearsal in serial picture recall tasks? A multi-method study

Abstract

Do children use different forms of verbal rehearsal in serial picture recall tasks? A multi-method study Use of verbal rehearsal is a key issue in memory development. However, we still lack detailed and triangulated information about the early development and the circumstances in which different forms of rehearsal are used. To further understand significant factors that affect children's use of various forms of rehearsal, the present study involving 108 primary school children adopted a multi-method approach. It combined a carefully chosen word length effect method with a self-paced presentation time method to obtain behavioural indicators of verbal rehearsal. In addition, subsequent trial-by-trial self-reports were gathered. Word length effects in recall suggested that phonological recoding (converting images to names-a necessary precursor for rehearsal) took place, with evidence of more rehearsal among children with higher performance levels. According to self-paced presentation times, cumulative rehearsal was the dominant form of rehearsal only for children with higher spans on difficult trials. The combined results of self-paced times and word length effects in recall suggest that 'naming' as simple form of rehearsal was dominant for most children. Self-reports were in line with these conclusions. Additionally, children used a mixture of strategies with considerable intra-individual variability, yet strategy use was nevertheless linked to age as well as performance levels.

Is Rehearsal an Effective Maintenance Strategy for Working Memory?

“…Researchers have attempted to measure all three forms of rehearsal indirectly through response times -either the times for self-paced encoding of further elements of the memory list (Morey et al, 2018;Poloczek, Henry, Messer, & Büttner, 2019) or the response times to a distractor task during the retention interval (Naveh-Benjamin & Jonides, 1984;Thalmann et al, 2019;Vergauwe, Camos, & Barrouillet, 2014). The underlying assumptions are that rehearsal takes time, and therefore participants postpone other processes until they finished rehearsing, and that they take more time to rehearse longer memory lists.…”

How language and inhibition influence analogical reasoning in children with or without developmental language disorder?

“…To further investigate this hypothesis, we manipulated a dimension of language that has not been associated with analogical reasoning in children (i.e., the use of phonological recoding). Phonological recoding is associated with the articulatory or sub-vocal rehearsal process in Baddeley's model of working memory and refers to the process by which written and visual material can be recoded into a phonological form that can be registered and maintained in the phonological store (Baddeley, 1992;Emerson & Miyake, 2003;Norris, Butterfield, Hall, & Page, 2018;Poloczek, Henry, Messer, & Büttner, 2019). This relies on covert articulation and on phonological representations (Baddeley, Thomson, & Buchanan, 1975;Balthazar, 2003;Norris et al, 2018;Poloczek et al, 2019).…”

Developmental Trajectories of Phonological Information Processing in Upper Elementary Students With Reading or Spelling Disabilities

“…Because the increasing differences that we found in our study developed between grade 4 and grade 5, differences in the automatization of subvocal rehearsal that, according to Fischbach et al (2014), occur during this age might explain the results. Also of interest is a study conducted by Poloczek, Henry, Messer, and Büttner (2019), which showed that at approximately 10 years of age, cumulative rehearsal (as opposed to single naming) increasingly emerges as a memory strategy to boost memory performance further. More importantly, the authors revealed that high‐performing 10‐year‐old students used cumulative rehearsal to improve immediate memory more often and more efficiently than their low‐performing peers.…”