flavell 1970 dpmental changes

COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY 1, 324-340 (1970)

Developmental Changes in Memorization Processes1

JOHN H. FLAVELL

University of Minnesota

ANN G. FRIEDRICHS

University of North Carolina

JANE D. HOYT

University of Minnesota

Developmental changes in two broad classes of memory-related phenomena were studied, using nursery school, kindergarten, second grade, and fourth grade children as Ss: (1) the production and strategic deployment over time of various types of memorization activities; (2) S’s knowledge concerning his own memory, With regard to (I), only the older Ss in this study tended to show a specific, fairly complex memorization strategy when given unlimited time to study a set of items to the point of perfect serial recall. The strategy appeared to consist of first naming the items to oneself to initiate the learning process, and of subsequently using systematic anticipation and rehearsal procedures to monitor and maintain one’s gradually increasing state of recall readiness. As for (Z), the older Ss were likewise better able than the younger ones, both to predict their own memory span in advance of any concrete memorization experience, and to assess their readiness to recall after such experience. It was concluded that the two phenomena are intimately interrelated in the older child’s memorization activities, and that the nature and development of S’s knowledge and awareness of his own memory system is a particularly important and timely research problem.

Recent evidence suggests that the cognitive and linguistic skills which the child spontaneously applies to the solution of memory tasks may show dramatic changes with age, especially during the early school years

1 This research was supported in part by a research grant to the first author from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (HD 0 1888) and by grants to the University of Minnesota’s Center for Research in Human Learning from the National Science Foundation (GS 541), from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (HD 01136), and from the Graduate School of the University. The authors are particularly grateful to Mervyn 0. Bergman for his technical assistance. They also thank Mr. John H&man, principal of Lexington Elementary School, St. Paul, Minnesota, and Mrs. Charles Pearlman, director of the Adath Jeshurun Nursery School, Minneapolis, Min- nesota, for their cooperation in providing Ss.

324

MEMORIZATION PROCESSES 325

(Flavell, 1970). For example, older children are much more likely than younger ones to use verbal rehearsal as a deliberate mnemonic technique in serial recall tasks (Flavell, Beach, & Chinsky, 1966; Kingsley & Hagen, 1969). There is now reason to suspect, however, that even such relatively simple and homogeneous-looking memorization strategies as verbal rehearsal may prove on closer analysis to be divisible into distinct subvarieties, each one possibly acquired at a different point in the child’s development (Daehler, Horowitz, Wynns, & Flavell, 1969; Flavell, 1970).

The present study was designed to obtain very detailed records of children’s spontaneous verbal and visual-perceptual activities as they memorized the names of a series of depicted objects. The purpose was to identify whatever different study patterns of looking and verbalization might be found, and to plot any developmental changes these patterns might exhibit. A second objective was to discover something about possible developmental changes, not in the child’s favored strategies for memo- rizing, but in the knowledge he has concerning his own memory. We are aware of no previous research on the development of this sort of knowledge, although it is currently attracting the attention of students of adult memory processes (Tulving & Madigan, 1970).

Two procedures were used. One attempted to assess the child’s ability to predict his own immediate memory span. The other estimated the child’s ability to sense when a set of items he had been studying was sufficiently well memorized to guarantee perfect immediate recall. Both of these procedures have to do with the child’s awareness of his own storage and retrieval capabilities, but in somewhat different ways. The first deals with self-estimated, projected capacity to store and retrieve, the child having in mind a future opportunity to study sets of items of a certain type. The second deals with his self-estimated ability to retrieve here and now, while in process of studying and storing a specific set of items.

METHOD

Subjects

The Ss were 14 nursery school children, 28 kindergarteners, 28 second graders, and 14 fourth graders from suburban, largely middle-class homes, with equal numbers of boys and girls within each grade level.

Procedure

All testing was administered by a female E (the second author) in a two- room trailer-laboratory parked adjacent to S’s school. The testing sequence, identical for all Ss, is given below:

326 FLAVELL, FRIEDRICHS, HOYT

Predicted object span. The child’s first task was to estimate his own immediate memory span. The E had at her disposal strips of heavy paper on which were mounted different-length series of pictures of familiar, readily namable objects (e.g., toy blocks, scissors, house). She first showed S a strip containing one object. She then named it, covered it, and asked him if he thought he would now be able to say its name from memory. He could, of course, and was asked to say the name aloud if he had not already done so spontaneously. The same procedure was then repeated for a horizontally presented strip of two pictures, with E emphasizing the need for ordered, left-to-right recall of the object names. The prediction process continued (now, minus actual attempts at recall) for a strip of three pictures, then four, and so on, either until S estimated that the series had now become too long for him to recall, or until a series of 10 pictures had been presented. The E’s instructional formula for each series of three pictures or more was: “Do you think you could remember n words (points to a strip of n pictures) if I said each of them just once and then covered them up?” An S’s predicted object span was taken to be the longest series of object names (to a maximum of 10) he thought he would be able to recall correctly.

Actual object span. The next step was to assess S’s actual memory span for such items. The E read aloud a series of first three, then four, etc., familiar object names at the rate of one name per second, with S in- structed to try to repeat each series in correct order. If S failed a sequence, he was given one more try with another sequence of the same length. In analogy with predicted object span, an S’s actual object span was defined as the longest series he was actually able to recall correctly.

Memorization and recall. The S was next asked to name the object depicted in each of 33 small, black and white line drawings, with E providing help when necessary. The objects were commonplace ones, likely to be familiar to young children, and the pronunciation of their names in- volved fairly conspicuous and distinctive lip movements (e.g., ball, moon, cat). All the object pictures that S would subsequently be called upon to study and memorize, in the course of one practice trial and three test trials, were drawn from this set of 33.

The S was then seated before a stimulus panel. The panel was mounted in the one-way mirror of the wall which separated the two rooms of the trailer-laboratory. The panel contained a horizontal row of ten 2 X 3-in. windows with a button directly beneath each window. One of the above- mentioned object pictures was illuminated in a window whenever S pressed the button beneath it, and it remained visible only so long as S kept pressing the button. On the initial practice trial, only the rightmost three windows contained pictures. The instructions to each S on this trial were approximately as follows:


“Now the pictures (referring to the ones S had just named) are going to be hidden. You will have to push a button like this to see them (E pushes the three buttons in a random sequence). Now you try it, but only push one button at a time. You can look at any one you need to and in any order you want, but I’m going to want you to say them back to me in this order (gestures in the left-to-right direction)-first this one, then this one, then this one (points to each window), all without looking at the pictures. Let’s try it. Remember, you can look at the pictures as long as you want. When you are sure you know them all by heart, ring this bell (a desk bell is on the chair beside S) and I’ll come hear you say them back to me. Be careful, though, not to ring until you can remember every one very, very well in the right order without looking. So when you do know them, ring the bell and say the words right out loud like this (E demonstrates with the three pretest pictures), and I’ll hear you. Okay, you can begin.” If, during this practice trial, S made procedural errors, they were corrected (e.g., he was not permitted to depress more than one button at a time). If he failed to recall all the words in correct order, he was cautioned once again not to ring the bell until he is sure he could remember the whole series. If he performed successfully, he was warmly praised.

Three test trials followed. The procedure was essentially identical to that of the practice trial, with two exceptions: the object pictures were now placed behind the leftmost rather than rightmost windows of the panel; the above-mentioned cautioning after imperfect recall was discon- tinued after the first of these three trials. A different series of objects was presented on each trial, but all three series were set exactly equal in length to the individual S’s own actual object span, determined minutes earlier in the testing session. Pilot research had suggested that a series of object- span length would be of suitable difficulty level for our purposes-defi- nitely short enough to be able to be recalled by that child, but only after some reasonable effort at memorization on his part. The particular object pictures presented for study on each trial always consisted of the first II pictures of a fixed sequence of 10, where n equals that S’s actual object span. These three lists of 10, plus the three practice items, comprise the 33 object pictures S had named initially. The rare child who on any trial persisted in waiting as long as 15 min before indicating his readiness to be tested was dropped as an S; the average length of study period for all Ss retained in the sample was actually only 53.43 sec.

Recall for each series was also assessed a second time with no explicit prior announcement to S that this would occur. These retests were inserted into the study-test sequences as follows: study 1 (i.e., self-timed study of the first picture series)-test 1 (i.e., the immediately-subsequent attempt to recite this series to @--study 2-test 2-retest l-study 3- test 3-retest 2-retest 3. The retests were presented to the child as


minor excursions from the main procedure (which, indeed, they were to us as well), without any suggestion conveyed that S really should be expected to perform well on them.

Finally, half of the kindergarten and second-grade groups and all of the preschoolers and fourth graders did their studying with E physically ab-

sent from the room (she awaited S’s ready signal just outside the closed door). In the case of the remaining kindergarteners and second graders, E remained in the room, sitting quietly a few feet behind him and unrecep- tive to any bids for attention while he studied.

Rationale. Each part of the foregoing task sequence was designed to provide information related in some way to the development of memory. It is apparent, for instance, that the relation between the child’s predicted memory span and his actual memory span might inform us about one aspect of his knowledge regarding his own memory capacities. His ability to recall the picture series on the three study-test trials should be a measure of another aspect of that knowledge, namely, knowledge about the retrievability of currently processed items. It seems reasonable to credit a child with at least a modicum of this latter sort of knowledge if, having said he is now ready to recall a series perfectly, he then proceeds to do just that.

The retesting of previously tested series was something of an after- thought, inserted into the design in the hope that it might at least roughly measure degree of overlearning or “overmemorization” of correctly recalled series. It might be, for example, that there is an increase with age in the ability or disposition to memorize the series just well enough to sat- isfy E’s immediate recall requirements; the use of this efficient, “least-effort” strategy could be reflected in perfect recall at test coupled with very poor recall at subsequent retest.

The purpose of the self-timed study periods was to permit S to memorize the picture series and, more importantly, to afford us some observational data as to how he went about doing so, i.e., his study-memorization strategies. An Esterline-Angus event recorder was connected to the buttons of the display panel, its pen tracings automatically providing a permanent record of the timing and sequence of S’s spontaneous picture-exposing behavior (and hence, by not much inference, of his spontaneous picture-studying activity). An observer (the third author) was seated directly behind the one-way mirror throughout each testing session, She had trained herself to lipread the particular object names used in this study, was always aware of which object picture the child was currently studying, and could observe his face from a distance of l-2 ft. In addition, she wore a set of high-quality earphones to help supplement the visual evidence of verbalization. Pilot research had indicated the desirability of


recording each observed occurrence of four types of study patterns: Naming, Anticipation, Rehearsal, and Gesture (see Results and Discus- sion). The observer had her own panel of buttons for recording such patterns as they were observed. Since each button was connected to a separate pen on the above-mentioned event recorder, her observations produced a permanent record of the frequency and time of occurrence of these patterns.

Finally, the E-present versus E-absent treatment of the kindergarteners and second graders during study periods was added to the design simply to find out whether the presence of another person would have any effect on a child’s disposition to engage in private, task-oriented speech, and whether any effect found would vary with the age of the child.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

We shall begin with an analysis of the data most directly pertinent to the child’s developing knowledge of his own memory abilities and processes. These data consist, firstly, of the relation between S’s predicted and actual object span, and secondly, of his readiness to recall items after the three self-terminated study periods. The remainder of the paper describes and interprets various behavior patterns observed during the study periods themselves, and also draws some general conclusions regarding the nature and development of memorization processes.

Predicted versus Actual Object Span

Table 1 summarizes most of the findings with respect to these two measures. As would of course be expected, actual span shows a regular increase with age across these four grade levels. At each grade level, mean predicted span is higher than mean actual span. The difference between these two spans is sharply reduced in the two oldest groups, however, both because actual span has increased and because predicted span has decreased. The bottom three rows of Table 1 provide addi- tional detail regarding this developmental increase in the ability to predict one’s own level of memory performance. First, however, there are some nondevelopmental observations to make concerning these predictions.

There is good reason to believe that the predicted object span test led the Ss to adopt either one or the other of two quite distinct and discontin- uous courses of action. On the one hand, S might assent, probably without reflections to the highest span that E ever puts to him (a decidedly unreal- istic span of 10, in our procedure). On the other hand, he might really come to grips with the task and make a genuine, more or less accurate estimate of his actual span, presumably informed by some sort of intuition or knowledge regarding his ability to memorize items. The following facts


TABLE 1 Performance on Actual Object Span and Predicted Object Span Tests

Grade (and Ns)

Measure N(l4) K(28) 2(28) 4(14)

Mean actual object span 3.50 3.61 4.36 5.50 Mean predicted object span 7.21 7.97 6.00 6.14 Percentage of Ss predicting 10 57(8/14) 64(18/28) 25 (7/28) 21(3/14) Mean error of Ss predicting < 10 1.66(6) 1.60(10) 0.81(21) 0.91(11) Percentage of (< 10) Ss with no

error 17(1/6) fxW0) 48(10/21) 36(4/l 1)

suggest the legitimacy of such a dichotomization. As the third row of Table 1 shows, 36 of the 84 Ss predicted precisely the largest span the test procedure allowed, i.e., 10 objects. Among the remaining 48 Ss, however, only one S predicted nine objects, none predicted eight and three predicted seven (but with two of these Ss having actual spans of six). In fact, the absolute level of predictive accuracy seemed surprisingly high among these 48 Ss (fourth row of Table 1). Moreover, they showed no tendency as a group either to overestimate or to underestimate actual span: 15 Ss predicted perfectly (fifth row), 17 overestimated, and 16 un- derestimated. Clearly, these Ss were processing the task in a qualitatively different fashion than the lo-choosers were.

Correspondingly, there are two sorts of age trends apparent in the data. First, the percentage of children who, for whatever reason, fail to deal with the task in a responsive and realistic manner shows a clear decrease with age (third row). And second, even among the children who are responsive, there is a significant tendency for the older ones to be more accurate in their predictions than the younger ones (fourth and fifth rows). For example, a 4-fold x2 table can be constructed from the fifth row, with grades N-K and 2-4 defining columns and with errorless and nonerrorless predictors defining rows. The resulting x2 value is 5.34, statistically significant at p < .05 (this and all other x2 values reported in this article were Yates-corrected). It is apparent that the first of these two trends cannot be taken as unequivocal evidence for, specifically, a developmental increase in the child’s knowledge of his own mnemonic processes and skills; there are clearly other age-related factors that might as readily account for this trend. Nevertheless, we think it not at all implausible that at least some of the Ss, and the younger ones especially, may have acceded to any span E proposed simply because they did not have the remotest idea how many items they would be able to remember. In any event, the second trend provides clear evidence for a developmental increase in this sort of


mnemonic knowledge. Considering only the “realistic” Ss once again, i.e., those predicting a span of less than 10 items, the mean errors of the two oldest groups are only about half the magnitude of those of the two younger groups, and the percentage of errorless predictors is several times higher in the upper two grades. It is worth emphasizing again, however, that a number of even the younger, 4- to 5-year-old children can predict their own spans with surprising skill: of the 15 N and K S’s in the < 10 category who misestimate at all, nine of them are off target only one object and four by only two.

Recall Readiness

Table 2 shows the percentages of Ss at each grade level who proved themselves ready to recall sets of picture series perfectly on none, one, two, or all three of their post-study-period recall opportunities. It is apparent that there is a very marked improvement over this age range in the child’s ability to sense when he has memorized a set of items sufficiently well to recall them perfectly. Combining adjacent grades and adjacent levels of recall to make a fourfold contingency table, this improvement is highly significant (x2 = 26.41; df= 1; p < .OOl). One might have expected that there would be some sort of grade by trial interaction here, with perhaps the younger Ss, having profited from knowledge of their initial recall failure and from E’s cautioning to do better next time, improving on the later trials. No interaction of this sort was evident in the data, however. Again, one certainly might have predicted that “realistic” (< 10) object span predictors would also tend to be more recall-ready, i.e., to recall better at test. The object span prediction test and the recall tests were, after all, both designed to tap S’s knowledge or skill with respect to his own memory processes. Again, however, the data suggested no such rela- tionship. And finally, the retesting of previously tested picture series also yielded nothing of interest: even when initial recall of a series had been er-

TABLE 2 Recall Readiness: Percentages of Ss Performing

Without Error on O-3 Recall Tests

Grade (and Ns) Number of tests

correct N(l4) KC281 2(28) 4(14)

None 14 18 0 0 One 64 32 7 0 Two 14 36 11 14 Three 7 14 82 86


rorless, subsequent recall of the same series tended to be very poor, and more or less uniformly so across grade levels. These negative findings notwithstanding, the object span prediction and recall readiness data impress us as being decidely encouraging overall. Even measures as crude and insensitive-appearing as these have proved capable of suggesting, and rather strongly, that S’s cognitive relation to his own memory system does somehow change in the course of the early school years. But more probing and analytic studies will now be needed, obviously, to find out exh,tly what the “somehow” consists of.

Study Period Behaviors

As indicated earlier, it had been decided on the basis of pilot data that the observer would record, from behind the one-way screen, all observed instances of four types of study activity:

Naming. The S presses one of the buttons, thereby exposing a picture of an object, and immediately says that object’s name once.

Anticipation. Finger poised in readiness to expose what he believes will be a picture of certain object, S first says that object’s name once and then presses the button, presumably to see if he had correctly memo 23 that object’s location. Notice that the naming-pressing sequence is 3 exact opposite of the one just described. Notice also that the S is here adminis- tering to himself, spontaneously, a learning-testing procedure much like what Es often administer to Ss in paired-associate learning experiments.

Rehearsal. The S names an object other than when actually observing it (as in Naming), or when in immediate anticipation of observing it (as in Anticipation). The typical instance of Rehearsal would be a string of two or more different names (i.e., part or all of the sequence of names S was to recall on that trial). More rarely, S might verbalize but a single name, either once or several times in succession; for example, he might press a button to expose a picture of a ball, look away thoughtfully, and then say “ball” (or “ball, ball . . .“).

Gesture. The S engages in the rhythmic motor behaviors of finger counting, touching or pointing to buttons, or head nodding (the third was somewhat less frequent than the first two).

Naming, Anticipation, and Rehearsal were mutually exclusive categories from the observer’s point of view. That is, at any given instant, S could be recorded as engaging in no more than one of these three response patterns. In contrast, Gesture could and did occur concurrently with other patterns, notably Rehearsal. A single recorded instance of either Naming or Anticipation behavior consisted of but a single heard and/or lipread word. In contrast, a single recorded occurrence of Rehearsal usually comprised a multiword utterance, followed by a pause. Not


surprisingly, a single scored instance of Rehearsal very often consisted of a rapid fire, poorly articulated repetition of the entire series of object names that S was to memorize on that trial. (Similarly, one coded instance of Gesture would often be a quick succession of gestures rather than a single one.) Accordingly, it should be borne in mind that a child with a Rehearsal score of, say, 10 might have done every bit as much “verbaliz- ing” (“verbally mediating”) in the service of his recall as a child with Naming or Anticipation scores of, say, 30. Although interjudge reliability for these categorizations was not formally assessed, we are confident that the observer had become both accurate and consistent in her recording by the time we were ready to test Ss in earnest.

An initial, somewhat peripheral question involving these study patterns was whether the presence versus the absence of E in the room during S’s study periods had any measurable influence on his verbalization. The verbalizations we were recording were clearly of the private, speech-for-self versus social-communicative variety (Kohlberg, Yaeger, & Hjertholm, 1968), and it might consequently be expected that they would be more in evidence under conditions of apparent privacy, at least in the case of the older Ss. However, comparisons of the Naming, Anticipation, and Rehearsal scores of E-in versus E-out Ss at both kindergarten and second grade levels completely failed to confirm any such expectation; in fact, the relevant pairs of mean scores were in all cases very similar. There might possibly have been group differences in the loudness rather than the amount of the speech detected, although the observer recalls having no such impression (most of the speech was more or less sotto vote). More than likely, E’s presence simply had little or no effect on either the quantity or the audibility level of the children’s verbalizations, and thus our E- in reduplication of kindergarten and second grade Ss served only to replicate one segment of the main (E-out) developmental study. But since the E-in and E-out mean scores did prove quite similar, within each age group and each category of study behavior, the replication was obviously successful-and to our way of thinking, an unintended successful replication is no less welcome than an intended one!

Brief mention of several other minor findings might also be made at this point. The average duration of Ss’ button presses significantly (p < .Ol) decreased with age up to second grade, with the second- and fourth- graders tending to expose pictures about equally briefly; the average time spent not looking at pictures-in between presses-did not show any significant age changes, however. Of greater interest was a significant (p < .05) increase with age in the mean length of Ss’ self-timed study periods. The actual figures, in mean number of seconds per study period, were 37.85, 39.55, 48.80, and 78.26, reading from youngest to oldest


grade group. It is possible that this increase largely reflects the older Ss’ greater effort to insure recall readiness-an effort that, as we have just seen (Table 2), was decidedly successful. Length of study period also varied significantly fp < .05) with trial, the third study period tending to be shorter than the first and second. There was no significant grade by trial interaction here, however.

The question of principal interest to us, however, concerned the possible influence of several variables, and most especially the age variable, on the four study patterns. Four-way analyses of variance were performed upon the study pattern scores of the 56 E-out Ss (the 28 E-in Ss were not considered in these analyses, in order to maintain equal Ns in the four age groups). The four independent variables were grade (4 levels), sex (2), trial (3), and “trial quartile” (4), i.e., each self-timed study period was divided into four equal time segments. The first two are between-S variables and the latter two are within-S variables. As Table 3 shows, there were significant grade, trial quartile, and grade x trial quartile effects in the case of all four study period behaviors. There were only three other significant effects out of the 48 remaining possibilities, none of them very credible, interpretable, or interesting: (1) a sex X trial quartile interaction 0, < .Ol) for Naming (both sexes show what will be seen to be a charac- teristic distribution of Naming responses across the four quartiles of each trial, but girls show it a bit more strikingly than boys); (2) a grade X sex X trial interaction (p < .05) for Anticipation, essentially indescribable; (3) a main effect for trial 01 < .05) in the case of Rehearsal that is certainly puzzling if it is not a chance effect (more rehearsal responses in the second trial than in the first or the third).

In contrast with these rather suspect effects, the pattern of findings represented in Table 3 tells what seems to us to be a rather clear and interesting story. Figure 1 gives a visual representation of each of the four

TABLE 3 F Values and Associated p Values for Significant Analyses of Variance

Effects Involving Study Period Behaviors

Type of study period behavior

Variable

Naming Anticipation Rehearsal Gesture

df F P F P F P F P

Grade (G) 3,48 4.09 c.05 9.88 c.001 9.38 <.OOl 7.41 <.OOl Trial quartile (Q) 3,144 27.08 <.OOl 9.36 < .OOl 22.80 <.OOl 9.06 c.001 GxQ 9,144 7.55 <.ool 2.39 C.05 3.24 <.Ol 5.60 <.OOl


I I / M Grade N _ 0-0 Grada h 0-0 Grade 2 A-A Grade 4

1

FIG. 1. Distributions of Naming, Anticipation, Rehearsal, and Gesture Responses over trial quartiles for each grade group.

grade X quartile interactions. These interactions taken as a group suggest the developmental emergence, during the early school years, of a fairly complex mnemonic strategy for coping with this sort of memory problem. According to this strategy, S commences each study period by familiar- izing himself with the identity and location of each object picture, saying the names of the pictures to himself as he exposes them in an initial effort to get the list into memory storage (Naming). As the list begins to get memorized in this fashion, the temporal and psychological relationships between his perceptual and linguistic responses become more varied, with a more sophisticated Anticipation and Rehearsal activity (often punc- tuated by Gesture) starting to alternate with and to substitute for this simple Naming behavior. Consequently, hype end of the trial, Rehearsal is just reaching its peak and Anticipation remains high, but Naming has ebbed to quite a low level. An analysis of individual response records also suggests that a number of the older Ss followed roughly this strategy. Of the 25 second-graders and 14 fourth-graders whose observational records contain at least some instances of all three major response categories, the records of 16 second-graders and 10 fourth-graders showed the following


pattern, summing across the three trials: more instances of Naming in the first two trial quartiles combined than in the last two combined, and the converse for Anticipation and for Rehearsal.

What functions might Anticipation and Rehearsal perform in S’s attempts at memorization, and why should they gradually preempt Naming as the study period continues? Our belief is that, relative to Naming, Anticipation and Rehearsal have somewhat more to do with the output from memory, or retrieval, in contrast to the input to memory, or storage. And it is item retrieval rather than item storage, after all, that E will demand of S when the study period is completed. Our hypothesis is that, as the study period proceeds, the process of getting ready to be tested becomes increasingly one of checking and maintaining one’s gradually improving ability to retrieve a complete, correctly ordered list of the picture names. While it is undoubtedly true that the exercise of all three study patterns can and does serve to improve retrievability, Anticipation and Rehearsal seem especially well-fitted to monitor and maintain it as well. Like Naming, Anticipation and Rehearsal do of course consist of potentially recall-facilitating repetitions of item names. Unlike Naming, however, an attempted Anticipation also provides information about an item’s current level of retrievability. It thus serves to check and monitor S’s progress towards the task-defined criterion of complete retrievability. Also unlike Naming, Rehearsal serves to sustain and safeguard the list’s gradually improving retrievability, the rehearsed utterance eventually becoming indistinguishable from the recall-test utterance.2 Needless to say, Anticipation could also maintain as well as monitor, and Rehearsal automatically monitors in the very act of maintaining. We saw a number of rather amusing examples of Rehearsal apparently serving both roles. An S (usually an older one), finally able to rehearse his entire list (call it “A-B-C”) rapidly and correctly, would thereupon wrap up both study period and recall test as follows: “A-B-C, ” “A-B-C” (hits the signal bell without the slightest pause in the rehearsal cycle) “A-B-C,” “A-B-C” (E hastens into the room), “A-B-C” (S turns to E), “A-B-C!” (said loudly and triumphantly to E). By virtue of having produced one or more complete rehearsals, such an S judges that he is now ready to be tested, i.e., he thinks he can produce yet another, identical rehearsal for E that will comprise his recall test (a monitoring function). And by virtue of then

2 This last would of course only be true of the more common form of Rehearsal, wherein S repeats a whole string of object names. The less common form, i.e., repeating a single name one or more times, strikes one as a rather different sort of process altogether-more like an elaborated version of Naming, perhaps. It was unfortunate that the observer could not quickly, easily, or frequently enough distinguish the two forms to warrant recording them under separate response categories.


continuing to rehearse uninterruptedly until E enters the room, S prac- tically guarantees that he will in fact produce this identical rehearsal (a maintenance function). There is one bit of evidence in the data that is at least consistent with these ideas about the monitoring-maintaining roles of Anticipation and Rehearsal in this sort of study-test sequence: among the 42 nursery school and kindergarten children, the presence of either Antic- ipation or Rehearsal behavior in an S’s record is positively associated with degree of recall readiness (coincidentally, both chi-square values are 4.34, df = 1, P < .W.

It is apparent from Table 3 and Fig. 1 that the younger Ss differ from the older ones in two ways. First, they show significantly fewer Naming, Anticipation, Rehearsal, and Gesture responses than their elders (the significant main effect of age). And second, the responses they do produce fail to show the pronounced quartile effects so evident in the older groups (the significant interaction of age with quartile). We are inclined to make less of the interaction than the main effect. Inspection of the individual response records shows that the rare N or K S who did produce at least a moderate number of Anticipation or Rehearsal responses also tended to distribute them much as the older children did, for instance with Antici- pation least frequent in the first quartile and Rehearsal most frequent in the last quartile. More than likely, the tendency to distribute these response patterns strategically across study period quartiles develops apace with the disposition to produce them at all-or at least to produce them in quantity. More interesting, we think, is this very failure on the part of the young child to produce them in quantity. It should be noted that the failure is not really uniform across the three major categories. For instance, fully 90% of the N and K Ss produce at least some Naming responses, whereas only 38% and 33% of them produce any Anticipation and Rehearsal responses, respectively (comparable figures from the two older groups combined: lOO%, 95%, 98%). Similarly, the fourth-graders average about two and a half times as many Naming responses as the nursery school children do, but some nine times as many Rehearsal responses and an incredible 22 times as many Anticipation responses.

Such evidence is consistent with that of other recent studies (e.g., Dale, 1969; Flavell, 1970; Hagen, Meacham, & Mesibov, 1970) in suggesting two conclusions about the nature and development of memory strategies. The first conclusion is that it is no longer sufficient to say of a child (much less an adult) that his recall was “verbally mediated,” that he “verbalized the stimulus names” in an effort to remember a series of items, etc. It is one thing, psychologically, to “verbalize a stimulus name” as part of a Naming routine and quite another to perform the selfsame speech act- literally the same “response’‘-within the setting of a self-testing, Antici-


pation program, or in the context of a systematic Rehearsal cycle. “Ver- bal mediation” appears to be a very mixed bag of cognitive processes, at least where memory is what is being ‘mediated.” Moreover, the unpack- ing of that bag may require elaborate and fine-grained observational methods akin to those invented for the present experiment.

The second conclusion is that these processes tend to be develop- mentally as well as functionally heterogeneous. The present evidence, especially when considered together with the results of other recent studies (see Flavell, 1970) , strongly suggests that Naming is an earlier-developed method for coping with memory problems than either Anticipation or Rehearsal. Moreover, there is at least a faint suspicion that Naming, unlike Anticipation and Rehearsal, may not always be produced for the express purpose of aiding memory. If a child Anticipates or Rehearses in a memory task like the present one, there is every reason to believe that he did so specifically in order to further his memorization efforts; he would almost certainly not have done either, for instance, had he merely been requested to look at the pictures for his own amusement rather than to memorize them. Can we be so sure that he would not have Named them under these conditions? Or more to the present point, is it as certain that the younger Ss in this study always Named for the sole and specific purpose of aiding memory as it is that the older Ss always Anticipated and Rehearsed for this purpose? A recent study by Dale (1969) suggests that young children may often make implicit labeling responses, more or less passively and automatically, when perceiving readily namable stimuli. We should like in future research to test the hypothesis that naming as a deliberate mnemonic strategy only gradually differentiates from naming as an almost reflexive concomitant of perceptual identification, or more gener- ally perhaps, the hypothesis that the deliberate intention to memorize perceptual inputs for later recall only gradually emerges and articulates itself from the less deliberate intention just to recognize and contemplate them. Notice that the present turn of the discussion further accentuates and highlights the presumed differences in mnemonic behavior between the younger and older Ss in this study. Not only do the older children Name, Anticipate, and Rehearse where the younger ones tend only to Name, it may also be true that even the Naming of the older Ss is more exclusively mnemonic in intent than is the Naming of the younger Ss.

As indicated in the introductory paragraphs of this article, this study was originally conceived in reference to what we had regarded at the time as two distinct and different objectives, one dealing with what S does to memorize material and the other with what he knows about his memory states and processes. In retrospect, the two appear to be more closely in- tertwined than we had suspected. In particular, much of what is done


when an older S memorizes material seems to be done either in response to something he has just learned about his current memory state or, con- versely, in response to a felt need to assess the current state. The fourth- grader, we have been arguing, is very much more closely attuned to his own mnemonic states and processes than the preschooler is. He clearly shows this by his superior a priori prediction of memory span and by his superior a posteriori judgment of recall readiness. But he also may be showing it, we now think, in the very act of engaging in mnemonic-strategic behaviors like Anticipation and Rehearsal. The judgment that his recall is now ready to be tested is only the last and most salient of a whole series of prior judgments and predictions about his recall state, with each of these judgments both resulting from and leading to such mnemonic- strategic behaviors. Need to appraise current readiness? Appraise it by Anticipating or attempting to Rehearse. The appraisal said you aren’t ready to recall yet? Rehearse some more. All in all, we find ourselves agreeing with Tulving and Madigan’s rather extravagant evaluation of the importance of mnemonic monitoring as an object of scientific inquiry:

“What is the solution to the problem of lack of genuine progress in un- derstanding memory? It is not for us to say, because we do not know. But one possiblility does suggest itself: why not start looking for ways of experimentally studying, and incorporating into theories and models of memory, one of the truly unique characteristics of human memory: its knowledge of its own knowledge. No extant conceptualization, be it based on stimulus-response associations or an information-processing paradigm, makes provisions for the fact that the human memory system cannot only produce a learned response to an appropriate stimulus or retrieve a stored image, but it can also rather accurately estimate the likeli- hood of its success in doing it. . . . We cannot help but feel that if there is ever going to be a genuine breakthrough in the psychological study of memory . . . it will, among other things, relate the knowledge stored in an individual’s memory to his knowledge of that knowledge” (1970, p. 477).

REFERENCES

DAEHLER, M. W., HOROWITZ, A. B., WYNNS, F. C., & FLAVELL, J. H. Verbal and non- verbal rehearsal in children’s recall. Child Development, 1969, 40, 443-452.

DALE, P. S. Color naming, matching, and recognition by preschoolers. Child Development, 1969,40, 1135-l 144.

FLAVELL, J. H. Developmental studies of mediated memory. In H. W. Reese & L. P. Lips&t (Eds.), Advances in child development and behavior. Vol. 5, New York: Academic Press, 1970.

FLAVELL, J. H., BEACH, D. H., & CHINSKY, J. M. Spontaneous verbal rehearsal in a memory task as a function of age. Child Development, 1966, 37, 283-299.


HAGEN, J. W., MEACHAM, J. A., & MESIBOV, G. Verbal labeling, rehearsal, and short-term memory. Cognitive Psychology, 1970,1, 47-58.

KINGSLEY, P. R., & HAGEN, J. W. Induced versus spontaneous rehearsal in short-term memory in nursery school children. Developmental Psychology, 1969, 1, 40-46.

KOHLBERG, L., YAEGER, J., & HJERTHOLM, E. Private speech: four studies and a review of theories. Child Development, 1968, 39,691-736.

TULVING, E., & MADIGAN, S. A. Memory and verbal learning. Annual Review of Psychol- ogy, 1970,21,437-484.

(Accepted May 26, 1970)

flavell 1970 dpmental changes

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