Kindergarten children’s event memory: the role of action prediction in remembering

Abstract

In two studies, kindergarteners participated in a series of staged events immediately preceded by pre-event interactions that were designed to identify factors relevant to improving recall. The events were based on preschool science-related activities and the experimental pre-event involved predicting actions to occur during a target event, manipulating types of cues available to support these predictive inferences. Action prediction did improve free recall, and effects may have influenced attentional processes evoked by actions generated and enacted. Although children effectively used outcome cues to predict actions, a one-to-one relation between pre-event action prediction patterns and recall did not occur. In combination with other findings, this result may suggest that increased attention during the target event may have supported the pre-event effect rather than integration of information between the pre-event and target event. Early childhood teachers engaging children in science activities should provide explicit cues to enhance usefulness of preparatory activities for recall.

Appendices

Appendix 1

Examples of actions defining and materials used in a preserved and transformed event.

Preserved event

Outcome: make a kazoo

Materials: pencil, tissue tube, rubber band, wax paper, staple remover, cellophane tape, tissue paper

• 1. Tear off piece of tape.

• 2. Put tape on child’s hand.

• 3. Wrap tube in tissue paper.

• 4. Tape the tissue paper.

• 5. Press staple remover into tube to make hole.

• 6. Push the pencil through the hole to make the hole bigger.

• 7. Put the wax paper on the end of the tube.

• 8. Put the rubber band around the tube.

Transformed event

Outcome: make a fingerprint

Materials: glass disk, strainer, glove, charcoal, Chapstick, paper plate

• 1. Rub the Chapstick on the end of the finger.

• 2. Rub the finger and thumb together.

• 3. Place the finger in the middle of the glass disk.

• 4. Put the glass disk on the paper plate.

• 5. Put the strainer over the glass disk.

• 6. Put on the glove.

• 7. Rub the charcoal over the strainer.

• 8. Blow away the charcoal dust.

Event action coding

Pre-event actions

To be coded as a match the predicted action needed to include a complete and specific action, the same process for a tool or object used in the actual action, and achieve the same outcome as an actual action. For the kazoo, for example, a match would be “put the wax paper on the end of the tube,” but “put the tissue on the end of the tube” would be a mismatch. Or for the clay, “put the salt in the bowl,” would be a match, but “mix the salt and flour in the cup,” would be a mismatch. Nonspecific actions such as “you use the tissue” or object references, such as “the bowl” were not counted as a match or a mismatch and were not included. A second coder independently coded 25% of the protocols. Dividing the number of agreements by the sum of agreements and disagreements yielded a reliability score of 88%. Disagreements were resolved through discussion.

Recall

Event actions recalled that described the outcome achieved and the process used to achieve it were scored as accurate. Actions that were inaccurate were infrequent and dropped from the coding process. A second coder independently coded 40% of the recall protocols. The recall reliability measure, calculated in the same way as the Action Prediction pre-event score, was 91.5%.

Appendix 2

See Table 3.

Table 3 Mean (SD) correct actions reported during free and total recall in experiment 1b for the outcome absent condition