Memory-strategy learning and maintenance in preschool children.

Abstract

This study examined preschool children's abilities to maintain the use of a newly learned organizational study-recall strategy in tasks administered immediately after training and 3 and 7 days after training. Thirty-six 4-and 5-year-olds were assigned to training and control conditions after performing study-recall tasks in a baseline session. Training included demonstration and practice in using the strategy, encouragement to apply the strategy in new tasks, a rationale for strategy use, feedback about strategy effectiveness, and incentive for effortful performance. Subjects in training groups showed marked increases in study-sorting, group-naming, and category self-cuing activities in posttraining tasks. The majority of the training subjects were able to remember and sequentially perform at least 3 of the 4 instructed strategy activities in the immediate and 3-day posttraining sessions. Training also served to improve recall, but recall improvements were modest relative to posttraining gains in study-strategy activities.Previous findings that children failed to apply mature rehearsal and organization strategies after using them successfully in an instructed or cued-recall condition (e.g., Bjorklund, Ornstein, & Haig, 1977;Keeney, Cannizzo, & Flavell, 1967;Lange, 1973) suggested that younger age groups of children may be unable to transfer their learning of mature mnemonic strategies and unable to benefit from strategy instruction (for reviews and discussion, see Belmont, Butterfield, & Ferretti, 1982;Borkowski, 1983;Brown, Bransford, Ferrara, & Campione, 1983). These findings were consistent with more general theoretical views that young children are preoperational and nonstrategic and lack the logical/causal reasoning skills that enable flexible applications of knowledge and skills across tasks and stimulus domains (cf. Brown et al., 1983).Recently, it has been argued that children's strategy-transfer failures do not reflect an inherent inability to transfer cognitive skills, but rather are due to the use of deficient instructional procedures that lack the metacognitive and motivational elements necessary to promote strategy use in younger samples, that is, what Borkowski, Carr, and Pressley (1987) have termed an instructional deficiency. This view is supported by findings that children benefit from cognitive-strategy training (e.g, Bjorklund & Harnishfeger, 1987;Rabinowitz, 1984) and that under some instructional conditions, normally achieving elementary-age school children maintain the use of mature memory strategies and metacognitive skills after training (e.g., Carr, We wish to express our sincerest thanks to the children, parents, and teachers of the Child Care Education Program at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro for their assistance and participation in the study; to Peter Ornstein and lab-mates Brian Cox, Trisha Folds, Marianna Footo, Diana Larus, and Bob Nida for their helpful suggestions for the design and procedures of the study; and to Rob Guttentag and Fred Morrison for their helpful...

The flexibility of source‐monitoring training: Reducing young children's source confusions

“…For instance, Lange and Pierce (1992) showed that 4-and 5-year-old children trained to sort objects into one set of categories benefited when later asked to sort objects using a different set of categories. Whereas their training and transfer categories were completely different (e.g.…”

“…they should be given metacognitive feedback). Lange and Pierce (1992) found that, with sufficient practice and metacognitive feedback, 4-and 5-year-old children who were trained to sort objects according to one set of categories transferred this strategy to objects belonging to a different (non-analogous) set of categories. Accordingly, the second aim of the present study was to determine whether training on live and video sources of information (with sufficient amounts of practice and metacognitive feedback) would help children to distinguish between live and story events.…”

“…However, children did benefit from training (e.g. Lange & Pierce, 1992) when Schneider and Pressley's (1989) guidelines for effective training were met. According to Schneider and Pressley (1989), effective training must be direct and provide children with sufficient practice.…”

Memory Development from Early Childhood Through Emerging Adulthood

“…Levels of organization in terms of both sorting and clustering increased with age and were accompanied by increases in recall (see also Corsale and Ornstein 1980;Hasselhorn 1992). Studies have also provided evidence that 199 young children (preschoolers and kindergarteners) can be easily trained to use an organizational strategy with corresponding improvements in recall (e.g., Black and Rollins 1982;Guttentag and Lange 1994;Lange and Pierce 1992). Even preschoolers have been found to use organizational strategies and to demonstrate enhanced levels of recall when instructions are modified to emphasize the importance of grouping according to the meaning of items (e.g., Lange and Jackson 1974;Sodian et al 1986) or when the children are explicitly trained to use organizational strategies (e.g., Carr and Schneider 1991;Lange and Pierce 1992).…”

“…Studies have also provided evidence that 199 young children (preschoolers and kindergarteners) can be easily trained to use an organizational strategy with corresponding improvements in recall (e.g., Black and Rollins 1982;Guttentag and Lange 1994;Lange and Pierce 1992). Even preschoolers have been found to use organizational strategies and to demonstrate enhanced levels of recall when instructions are modified to emphasize the importance of grouping according to the meaning of items (e.g., Lange and Jackson 1974;Sodian et al 1986) or when the children are explicitly trained to use organizational strategies (e.g., Carr and Schneider 1991;Lange and Pierce 1992). As emphasized by Bjorklund et al (2009), the organizational abilities of preschoolers, kindergarteners, and young schoolchildren resemble their rehearsal abilities in that the children demonstrate a production deficiency.…”