The emergence of strategic verbal rehearsal at around 7 years of age is widely considered a major milestone in descriptions of the development of short-term memory across childhood. Likewise, rehearsal is believed by many to be a crucial factor in explaining why memory improves with age. This apparent qualitative shift in mnemonic processes has…

Young and nondemented older adults completed a visual object continuous recognition memory task in which some stimuli (lures) were similar but not identical to previously presented objects. The lures were hypothesized to result in increased interference and increased pattern separation demand. To examine variability in object pattern separation…

Knowledge of sequential relationships enables future events to be anticipated and processed efficiently. Research with the serial reaction time task (SRTT) has shown that sequence learning often occurs implicitly without effort or awareness. Here, the authors report 4 experiments that use a triplet-learning task (TLT) to investigate sequence…

Neither adults' nor children's performances on a reconstruction task was affected by spatial variation, but children's performance was influenced by variation in the temporal sequence of stimulus presentation. This article is based upon an M.A. thesis by the first author under supervision of the second author. A version of this paper was presented…

A serial recognition task was used to compare performance of two age groups of learning disabled children (mean chronological ages 8.1 and 10.6) with 2- and 3-dimensional representations of nonlabeled 8-point random shapes. (Author/JMB)

Three studies investigated both serial learning (SL) and retention processes among first through sixth graders. Pictorial serial list items improved SL performance only for second, third, and fourth graders, while fifth graders performed better with verbal materials and sixth-grade performance was comparable in both presentation modes. (Author/CS)

A series of studies indicated that performance on serial recognition memory tasks was relatively constant over a wide range of age and IQ, and except for response biases and forgetting rate, recognition memory processes of normal and retarded children appeared to be identical with those of adults. (Author/DR)

College-age and older adults predicted their memory spans and indicated readiness to recall sets of drawings. Differences were obtained in recall readiness. In Experiment two the recall of a chunking and rehearsal trained group of older adults was better than that of a control group given standard instructions. (Author)

Presents four studies which examined the ability of kindergarten and second-grade children to regenerate the order of events expressed in narrative sequences using recognition, reconstruction, and recall as the response modes. (Author/ED)

The present study was designed to investigate the effects of stimulus presentation rate on recall and primacy-recency effects in children. Results indicated that the traditional interpretation of the primacy effect as reflecting long-term memory store may not be valid. (Author/SB)

The ability of 4th, 6th, and 8th graders to use structures inherent in a list of permuted symbols, defined in terms of Piagetian theory, was investigated. Age differences were noted. Results supported the theoretical notion that environmental event structure facilitates learning. (ST)

Children's short-term memory was studied under two experimental conditions: one in which recall was expected to be facilitated because of the provision of a study period, and one in which a distracting task was imposed that was expected to interfere with recall. Forty subjects at each of two age levels, 7 and 11 years, were tested in a…

To examine developmental aspects of auditory sensory memory, a series of experiments was conducted on the stimulus suffix effect with the primary variables being age of subject (7 and 11 years), rates of presentation, and length of list. Effects were nearly identical across age groups when a fast presentation rate was used. (Author/DB)

Investigated the serial recall strategies of 96 children aged 5-8 years by applying a theoretical and methodological approach originally developed to investigate preschoolers' arithmetic strategies. Results indicated the use of multiple approaches for serial recall and adaptive strategy choices. (RJC)

This experiment examined the spoken serial recall by adults and second grade children of aurally presented lists of digits, synthetic stop consonants, and synthetic vowels. (SB)