Abstract
In two experiments, children were compared on recall following orienting tasks that involved attention to semantic or nonsemantic features of words. In Experiment 1, young children benefited from a semantic task as much as older children, compared to a nonsemantic task, but younger children still recalled fewer words after either task. In Experiment 2, subjects had experience with various versions of tasks at the same level, then were transferred to a task that required no overt orienting decision. There was no evidence that experiences derived from overt classifications were spontaneously carried over to benefit general memory performance. This suggests that the benefits of semantic over nonsemantic orienting tasks are due to the automatic by-products that result for different types of orienting tasks, rather than to the priming of generalizable strategies.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.
References
Battig, W. F., & Montague, W. E. Category norms for verbal items in 56 categories: A replication and extension of the Connecticut category norms. Journal of Experimental Psychology Monograph, 1969, 80(No. 3, Pt. 2). Brown, A. L. Theories of memory and the problems of development: Activity, growth, and knowledge. In L. S. Cermak & F. I. M. Craik (Eds.), Levels of processing and human memory. Hillsdale, N.J: Erlbaum, 1979. Craik, F. I. M. Depth of processing in recall and recognition. In S. Domic (Ed.), Attention and performance (Vol. 6). Hillsdale, N.J: Erlbaum, 1977. Flavell, J. H. Developmental studies of mediated memory. In H. W. Reese & L. P. Lipsitt (Eds.), Advances in child development and behavior (Vol. 5). New York: Academic Press, 1970.
Geis, M. F., & Hall, D. M. Encoding and incidental memory in children. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 1976, 22, 58–66.
Hyde, T. S., & Jenkins, J. J. Recall for words as a function of semantic, graphic, and syntactic orienting tasks. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 1973, 12, 471–480.
Jablonski, E. M. Free recall in children. Psychological Bulletin, 1974, 81, 522–539.
Keller, K. E., Whitney, S. M., & Mueller, J. H. Variation in orienting tasks for immediate and free recall. American Journal of Psychology, 1979, 92, 293–305.
Murphy, M. D., & Brown, A. L. Incidental learning in preschool children as a function of level of cognitive analysis. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 1975, 19, 32–47.
Sykes, D. H. Stimulus processing and recognition memory in children. British Journal of Psychology, 1976, 67, 429–438.
Tulving, E., & Colotla, V. Free recall of trilingual lists. Cognitive Psychology, 1970, 1, 86–98.
Waters, H. S., & Waters, E. Semantic processing in children&’s free recall: Evidence for the importance of attentional factors and encoding variability. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory, 1976, 2, 370–380.
Weiss, S. L., Robinson, G., & Hastie, R. The relationship of depth of processing to free recall in second and fourth graders. Developmental Psychology, 1977, 13, 525–526. (Received for publication June 8, 1979.)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Additional information
The authors wish to acknowledge Patricia Sheehan, for serving as experimenter, and the helpful comments on an earlier draft by Donald Kausler and Jane Rankin.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Lorsbach, T.C., Mueller, J.H. Encoding tasks and free recall in children. Bull. Psychon. Soc. 14, 169–172 (1979). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03329435
Received:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03329435