The development of cueing strategies in young children

Abstract

This study investigated the nature of cueing behaviours in 3‐, 6‐ and 9‐year‐old children in a spatial memory task. Although few subjects spontaneously generated the target strategy, it was found that they could be induced to do so, following prompting. The second part of the study probed children's understanding of cueing behaviour. It was found that 3‐year‐olds could be induced to produce appropriate cueing behaviours without understanding their implications. Older children, in contrast, understood the principles underlying cueing, but sometimes failed to produce cueing strategies spontaneously. The implications of these results for theories of the development of memory strategies are discussed.

Children's Understanding of Cognitive Cuing: How to Manipulate Cues to Fool a Competitor

“…These results suggest that young preschoolers lack a metacognitive awareness of cognitive cuing, in the sense that they do not understand how knowledge can be acquired or retrieved in a human mind through the activation of semantically related information. This seems to contradict recent findings that even young preschoolers understand some basic facts about cognitive cuing and that this metacognitive understanding is related to their actual use of cuing strategies (Beal, 1985;Schneider & Sodian, 1988;Whittaker et al, 1985). While diese findings imply that young preschoolers do not merely conceive of cues in a behavioral manner, as assumed by Gordon and Flavell (1977), but diat diey possess some knowledge of the positive effects of associated cues on cognitive performance, they are compatible with the view that these children may lack an understanding of the causal mechanisms that make cues effective.…”

“…^^^ ^ location. However, Gordon and Flavell's (1977) study This account of the development of chilindicates that although semandcally associ-dren's understanding of cognidve cuing has ated cues funcdon as a source of knowledge recendy been challenged by Whittaker (1986) and Whittaker, McShane, and Dunn (1985). They found that a substantial proportion of 3year-olds predicted that placing a highassociate cue at an inappropriate location would not help recall, and that children of this age could systematically use indirect cues to eliminate alternatives when searching for hidden objects.…”

Variations on a technique: enhancing children's recall using narrative elaboration training

“…Research on the use of memory strategies suggests that children in the age-range of the children in our study (7 to 8 years) can use strategies to help retrieve information, but often need specific instruction to do so effectively. That is, they may not spontaneously use a new strategy (Kobasigawa, 1974(Kobasigawa, , 1977Paris et al, 1982;Ritter, 1978;Ritter et al, 1973;Whittaker et al, 1985) as in the free-recall section of the interview.…”

Memory Development from Early Childhood Through Emerging Adulthood

“…Although third-grade children applied the retrieval cues spontaneously without being prompted to do so, all preschoolers required prompting with 3-year-olds needing more prompting than 5-year-olds. Approximately one-third of the younger preschoolers (aged 3-4;6) failed to prepare retrieval cues given even the most explicit prompting (see Beal and Fleisig 1987;Whittaker et al 1985, for confirming evidence).…”