Modifying children’s processing of categorizable information for memory

Abstract

Twenty children in each of Grades 3 and 5 were given training over nine sessions in the use of organizational strategies for encoding and retrieval. A second group at each age level was given sheer practice on the materials used in the strategy training, and a third group was un~reated. Organizational strategy training resulted in higher levels of recall, clustering, and study organization on posttests in which the children studied an array of categorizable pictures and an array of categorizable words. This was true both for test items from categories and items not used and for those that were used in training. Such training produced greater clustering but not greater recall for an aurally presented list of categorizable words.This experiment is concerned with the modifiability of children's processing of categorizable information. There are a variety of mechanisms that might account for the usual superiority of recall for categorizable vs. unrelated material , varying in their locus (encoding vs. retrieval) and automaticity (automatic vs. strategic). Postman (1972) has described several of these mechanisms and suggested that they each are likely to play some role in situations involving the recall of categorizable items. In the case of children , however, the available data indicate that elementary school age children are relatively deficient in the spontaneous initiation of strategies both for encoding (Neimark, Slotnick, & Ulrich, 1971) and retrieving (Kobasigawa, 1974) categorizable information. Whether such deficiencies are maturationally determined or due to insufficient relevant experiences is a question of interest both from a theoretical and a more immediate practical (educational) view and is the focus of the present study.It seems clear that children at least as young as about 7 years will implement organizational strategies for retrieval (Scribner & Cole , 1972) or for storage (Moely, Olson, Halwes, & Flavell, 1969) of category information when explicitly instructed to do so, but do not do so spontaneously. Can such strategies be acquired by children through training? The evidence to date has been unconvincing. After having imposed an exhaustive category-search strategy on children in Grades 2, 4, and 6 for four successive study-recall trials with a categorizable word list, Scribner and Cole (1972) found no generalization to a new word list. Moely and JeffreyWe are grateful to our research assistants, Cheryl Gay, Jerry Goldman, Lisa Grossman, Gay Hall, Sue Hendricson, and Nancy Naron, and to the school officials, teachers, and students of the Martin Luther King Elementary School in Evanston. The research was supported by Grant OEG·5-7-0051 from the U.S. Office of Education. Requests for reprints should be addressed to James W. Hall, School of Education, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois 60201.(1974) reported an experiment in which one group of 6 and 7 year olds were given instruction and practice in sorting pictures into categories and producing category labels during study. They then were ...

Memory-strategy learning and maintenance in preschool children.

“…Although it is reasonable to assume that younger children require a more embellished training procedure than the procedures that have been used with school-age samples in the previously cited research, there are no available data bearing on optimal training procedures for this age group. The few previous investigations of strategy training with preschool children (Hall & Madsen, 1978; Whittaker, 1988) failed to find maintenance effects. In Hall and Madsen's (1978) experiment, maintenance failures occurred after subjects received 26 sessions of instruction and practice in searching for conceptual relationships and using category labels as retrieval cues.…”

“…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, Kurtz, Schneider, Turner, & Borkowski, 1989; Hall & Madsen, 1978; Leal, Crays, & Moely, 1985; O'Sullivan & Pressley, 1984; Reid & Borkowski, 1985).…”

“…This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. & Madsen, 1978;Whittaker, 1988) failed to find maintenance effects. In Hall and Madsen's (1978) experiment, maintenance failures occurred after subjects received 26 sessions of instruction and practice in searching for conceptual relationships and using category labels as retrieval cues.…”

“…& Madsen, 1978;Whittaker, 1988) failed to find maintenance effects. In Hall and Madsen's (1978) experiment, maintenance failures occurred after subjects received 26 sessions of instruction and practice in searching for conceptual relationships and using category labels as retrieval cues. Schneider and Pressley (1989) summarized a large literature about potentially effective instructional strategies to use with children.…”

“…Kurtz, Schneider, Turner, & Borkowski, 1989;Hall & Madsen, 1978;Leal, Crays, & Moely, 1985;O'Sullivan & Pressley, 1984;Reid & Borkowski, 1985).…”