The Development of Organizational Strategies in the Storage and Retrieval of Categorical Items in Free-Recall Learning

Abstract

The present study examined the relative effectiveness of organization strategy use at study versus test in a single-trial, free-recall learning task, 90 subjects from each of 3 grade levels (second vs. sixth vs, college) were presented with 36 pictures selected equally from 6 different taxonomic categories. 3 levels of organizational strategy use were factorially crossed during study and test: Categorical cues were either (a) absent, (b) available, or (c) imposed. Developmental increases in performance were observed for the dependent measures of correct recall, study-trial organization, test-trial organization, frequency of cue use, and self-reported study activities. Generally speaking, imposed organization at study attenuated age differences in correct recall performance and study-trial organization, whereas imposed organization at test served to attenuate age differences in verbal clustering. Performance in the available cue condition at study or test was indistinguishable from performance in the control condition (i.e., cues absent). The results from the present study are generally consistent with previous assessments of organizational effects and provide new evidence concerning their independent and additive functions at study and test in developmental free-recall performance.

Memory Development Between 2 and 20

“…Consider Kee and Bell's (1981) study that included subjects from grades 2 and 6 as well as university students. They measured the ARC duster values for both encoding and recall.…”

“…In contrast, the grade-2 and grade-6 subjects had low ARC scores during input, but higher ones at output (a fmding generally consistent with the results reported by Neimark et al ., 1971). Kee and Bell's (1981) study also included an instructional component. When the child subjects were instructed to sort into experimenter-specified categories during encoding, their ARC scores at encoding and output were high.…”

“…The study instruction generally improved the children's recall performance, especially at the grade-2 level. Kee and Bell (1981) concluded that variations in organizational behaviors during encoding and not during testing produced differences in memory performance in the sort-recall task. Kee and Bell's (1981) conclusion has been supported in more recent studies that used multiple regression procedures to estimate effects of organization at input and organization at output on memory performances in children ofvarious ages (Black & Rollins, 1982;Weinert, Knopf, and Körkel , 1983;Schneider, 1985bSchneider, , 1986Schneideret al .…”

Recall, clustering, and metamemory in young children

“…In order to assess the degree of color and category organization during encoding in the two instructional conditions, the photographs showing the final arrangement of the objects (after the 2-min play or sort period) were analyzed using a procedure first developed by Kee and Bell (1981). A ratio of repetition (RR) measure with a maximum value of slightly less than 1.0 and a minimum value of zero (see Bousfield & Bousfield, 1966) was computed for both category and color clustering.…”

Maternal provision of structure in a deliberate memory task in relation to their preschool children’s recall

“…Previous research on young children's memory development has reported that the most difficult task for young children is to access stored information from long-term memory rather than to encode it in the first place (Howe, Brainerd, & Kingma, 1985). A number of studies demonstrated that under highly supportive retrieval conditions, when directive cues were provided, young children were able to recall as much information about the stimuli as older children (e.g., Kee & Bell, 1981;Kobasigawa, 1974).In the present investigation, mothers' behavior was assessed during the study and recall phases of a memory task. What mothers did when helping their children to study the to-be-remembered items and later to recall them independently predicted children's memory performance.…”