The purpose of the present research was to study developmental trends in categorical organization strategy. The subjects were 160 children-40 nine-year-old boys, 40 nine-year-old girls, 40 seven-year-old boys, 40 seven-year-old girls. All subjects rec...
The purpose of the present research was to study developmental trends in categorical organization strategy. The subjects were 160 children-40 nine-year-old boys, 40 nine-year-old girls, 40 seven-year-old boys, 40 seven-year-old girls. All subjects received one of three lists of items differing in category representativeness in either a free-recall or a sort -recall task. The selection of list materials permitted separation of the effects of age differences in category knowledge from those of knowledge per se on children`s recall behavior. The tasks were administered to children individually with the memory task followed by the metamemory task. The data was analyzed with three -way ANOVA arid Pearson`s correlation coefficient. The results were that (1) Children`s recall, clustering, and metamemory increased with age, while age effects for clustering were restricted to the sort-recall/high typicality condition. At each age level, children showed higher level of recall, clustering and metamemory for category typical rather than atypical list, and sort-recall than free-recall. Level of clustering and metamemory were superior in the sort-recall task and for items of high category typicality. (2) 9-year-old children were capable of deliberately and efficiently using category organization as a memory strategy at least when appropriate contextual support was present (as determined by task requirements and list materials: sort-recall/high typicality).