Encoding Strategies in Primary School Children: Insights From an Eye-Tracking Approach and the Role of Individual Differences in Attentional Control

Abstract

The authors explored different aspects of encoding strategy use in primary school children by including (a) an encoding strategy task in which children's encoding strategy use was recorded through a remote eye-tracking device and, later, free recall and recognition for target items was assessed; and (b) tasks measuring resistance to interference (flanker task) and inhibition of attention to task-irrelevant stimuli (distractibility). Results revealed that the ability to inhibit distraction and resist interference undergoes developmental changes between the ages of 7-10 years. At the same time, children's capability to strategically focus on task-relevant aspects also continues to improve in primary school years. Although there were substantial relationships between encoding strategies and later recognition, encoding strategies appeared to be unrelated to basic aspects of attentional control.

That’s a good one! Belief in efficacy of mnemonic strategies contributes to age-related increase in associative memory

“…Such processes show robust maturation during childhood, account for improvements in memory (Best et al, 2009;Cowan & Alloway, 2009) and may mediate efficacious strategy use (Roebers, Schmid, & Roderer, 2010).…”

Examining implicit metacognition in 3.5-year-old children: an eye-tracking and pupillometric study

“…Eye-tracking has become a frequently used, nonverbal measure of young children's performances (e.g., Paulus et al, 2011; De Bordes et al, 2012; Elsner et al, 2012a,b; Fawcett and Liszkowski, 2012). In particular, it has been shown to be a suitable method to investigate young children's learning performances (e.g., Johnson et al, 2003; McMurray and Aslin, 2004; Roebers et al, 2010; Paulus and Fikkert, 2012) and, in school-aged children, also metamemory skills (Roderer and Roebers, 2010). Roderer and Roebers (2010) examined 7–9-year-old children's explicit confidence judgments (CJs) in a memory task.…”

Executive Functions and Their Differential Contribution to Sustained Attention in 5- to 8-Year-Old Children

“…Working memory was assessed with the Backward digit recall task of the Working Memory Test Battery for children (WMTB-C; Pickering & Gathercole, 2001) and a backward color recall task (Roebers, Schmid, & Roderer, 2010). In the Backward digit recall task, the child was presented with digits, which had to be memorized and repeated in the reverse order.…”