Mnemonic elaboration and recency judgments in children

COGNITIVE

PSYCHOLOGY

5, 233-248 (1973)

Mnemonic

Elaboration

Judgments

and Recency

in Children1

ANN L. BROWNS Children’s

Reseawh Center, University

of Illinois

Recency judgments in second and fourth grade Ss were examined when contextual or spatial locations were correlated with sequential order. No age differences were apparent when the cues were not available; however, unlike fourth grade S’s, the younger Ss failed to take advantage of the additional cues when they were provided. In Experiment 2, second grade Ss were successfully trained to use the appropriate strategy, suggesting that the age related deficiency was one of production rather than mediation. The effectiveness of mnemonic elaboration as an aid to recall of order information was established, together with the short-term efficiency of training such mnemonic strategies in young children who do not adopt them spontaneously. The data support the hypothesis that memory tasks are developmentally sensitive when a deliberate mnemonic strategy can be applied but insensitive to developmental differences when no strategy is appropriate.

Mnemonic elaboration as an aid to recall of both information and its temporal order is a memory strategy with both ancient origins (Yates, 1966) and reported efficiency in cases of exceptional memory (Crovitz, 1970; Luria, 1968). One such system, “the method of loci” (Bower, 1970; Yates, 1966), was developed to meet the needs of Roman orators who required techniques for remembering the sequential order of the main points of their orations. They were advised to imagine various locations (loci) in a familiar journey or building which had their own readily recalled sequential order. When committing the speech to memory the orator formed a striking image of the information in each of the successive loci. In delivering the address, the orator would “recreate” the journey, summoning up each successive location and its associated infor‘This research was supported by research grant HD-06864 from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. The author wishes to express her appreciation to the staff and children of the Pine Crest Elementary School, Georgetown, Illinois; the Gibson City Elementary School, Gibson City, Illinois; and the McKinley YMCA Summer Day Camp program, Champaign, Illinois. Thanks are also due to Peggy Haldeman for her assistance in collecting the data. ‘Address: Children’s Research Center, University of Illinois, 51 Gerty Drive, Champaign, Ill. 61820. 233 Copyright @ 1973 by Academic Press, Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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mation as required. Recall was helped rather than hindered by the elaboration, despite the “added” memory load. Interest in the use of mnemonic elaboration has revived and studies with adult Ss have confirmed the efficiency of the “method of lo&” (Bower & Reitman, 1972; Ross & Lawrence, 1968; Winograd, Karchmer & Tucher, 1970) and “pegword mnemonic” systems (Bower & Reitman, 1972; Paivio, 1971). Interest in similar phenomena in children has been reflected in the recent series of studies on verbal elaboration (Rohwer, 1970) and vivid associations (Holyoak, Hogeterp & Yuille, 1972; Reese, 1972) in paired-associate learning as well as memory for unitized scenes (Horowitz, Lampel & Takanishi, 1969). As the previous studies required that item information be remembered, the present study was designed to extend these findings by investigating the relation between mnemonic elaboration and memory for temporal order. The “method of loci” aided recall of order as well as item information and there is evidence to suggest that mnemonic elaboration, such as the addition of spatial and contextual associations, would aid temporal judgments in children. Piaget (1969) and Fraisse (1963) both suggest that the preadolescent child has difficulty with the concept of sequence when contextual or spatial cues are in conflict with temporal order. Even when there is no apparent conilict due to the absence of contextual or spatial cues, very young children appear to have difficulty with sequential order. Piaget (1969) h as shown that children of approximately 6 yr of age recall stories in sequential order but younger children appear unaware of the order when recalling a set of events. Similarly, Pufall and Furth (1966) found that whereas 5yr-olds can remember the sequential order of a short series when the items are presented simultaneously or successively, Cyr-olds can only do so with a simultaneous presentation. Both findings have been interpreted as evidence for the fact that the young child cannot create an internal representation of order before about 6 yr of age. By 7 yr of age, this ability appears to be established, as Brown (1973) found no developmental difference in Ss between 7 and 18 yr of age on a recency discrimination task similar to that used by Yntema and Trask ( 196‘3). However, in the absence of contextual or spatial cues, the recency judgments required were diflcult for all Ss (Brown, 1973). In the present studies an attempt was made to see whether finer recency judgments could be made if contextual and/or spatial cues were pro,vided. As with the ancient “method of loci,” a deliberate attempt was made to correlate spatial and contextual cues with temporal order, to make this order easier to recall. A series of three locations were provided, a house, a garden, and a street, representing stages in a doll’s journey to school. One third of each list was placed in each location in the order of the journey. In remembering the location of an item, information concerning

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its relative recency would be available. While this procedure borrows from the “method of loci” the correlation of locational cues and temporal order, it differs in that only three locations were provided for many items rather than one location per item. The same set of locations were provided for all Ss as Crovitz (1969) has shown that self-produced memory maps are not a necessary requirement of the “method of loci.” Finally, there was no attempt to ensure that the S forged dramatic interactive images between the items and their locations. Thus, Experiment 1 represented an initial attempt to determine if simple contextual and spatial locations could be used when relevant for temporal order judgments. In Experiment 2 training techniques were developed for younger Ss who failed to spontaneously exploit the available cues. EXPERIMENT

1

Method Subjects The Ss were 60 fourth grade mo (range = 8 yr 8 mo to 12 yr a mean CA of 7 yr 9 mo (range equal numbers of boys and girls

children with a mean CA of 10 years 4 2 mo) and 20 second grade children with = 6 yr 10 mo to 8 yr 6 mo ) . There were at each age range.

Apparatus The apparatus consisted of a hinged wooden board composed of two (91.44 X 101.6 cm) flaps. When assembled, the bottom flap formed a floor and the top flap an upright background. The board was divided into three (30.48 X 101.6 cm) parts corresponding to the three contexts, the house, the garden, and the street. The floor of the house partition was covered with red shag carpeting and the corresponding background was painted red and decorated with pictures of household furniture. The floor of the garden partition was covered with green astroturf, with the corresponding background painted green and decorated with pictures of flowers and trees. The third compartment, representing the street, was painted black. The background was decorated with pictures of cars, traffic signals, etc., while the black floor had a white dashed median line to represent the road. Stimulus Materials Colored pictures were cut from children’s books and pasted in the center of 8.9 X 8.9 cm black posterboard cards. There were 16 24-item lists. In each list there were 20 single pictures and 4 pictures which were

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the first members of double sets. The second members of the double sets served as probe stimuli. Thus, no picture was repeated within or between lists except as a probe item. A separate set of items was used during pretraining. Toy figures of a boy and a girl were also available. Procedure Pretraining The Ss received a series of practice lists consisting of single pictures, presented one at a time, followed by a test card containing the repetition of two items. The Ss were trained to choose the near item in each pair, i.e., the one that had occurred more recently. The initial practice list contained only two items and the Ss were required to choose the near item on two successive lists before proceeding to each successively increased list length of 3, 5, and 6 items. Experimental

Sessions

Following pretraining, the fourth grade Ss were randomly assigned to one of three presentation conditions. The second grade Ss were all tested in the first experimental condition, the Context Condition. Context Condition. In the first condition the stimuli were presented on the apparatus. The Ss were initially familiarized with the apparatus using the two small dolls. The E demonstrated the sections corresponding to the house, the garden, and the street. Then the temporal connection between the three sections was emphasized by the E relating how each morning the boy (girl) leaves the house, walks through the garden, and crosses the street on his (her) way to school. The Ss were encouraged to imitate the story using the doll “walking” through the stages of the journey. The girl doll was used for girls and the boy doll for boys. Following the familiarization session the Ss were tested with the first eight experimental 24-item lists. The remaining eight lists were presented on the second day. Each list was presented in three sets of eight items each. The first set of items was presented one item at a time in a vertical column in the house section, the second set in the garden, and the final set of eight was presented in the street section. The items were placed face up and the S labelled each item before it was turned face down in readiness for the next item. There was no extra pause betvc;een the presentation of the last item in one context and the first in the next. List Condition. The procedure of the List Condition was identical to that of the Context Condition with the exception that the apparatus containing the contexts was not used. The list structure was maintained by presenting the 24-item lists in three sets of eight items. Each set of eight

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items was placed on a table in a vertical column exactly as in the Context Condition; however, there were no additional contexts to emphasize the list structure. Blank Condition. In the third condition, both the context and list structures were removed and each 24-item list was presented in a single stack. There were eight problem types consisting of the factorial combination of Separation (2) X Position (2) X Cues (2). The two Separations were 0 and 5 and this referred to the number of items which intervened between the first presentation of the two tested items. The two Positions were the first half of the list and the second half of the list. The two Cues Conditions referred to whether or not the tested items occurred initially in the same set or in different sets of eight items. The eight problem types are illustrated in Table 1. For example, consider the first entry in Table 1. This refers to the re-presentation of serial positions 7 and 8 on the probe. The separation between their initial presentations was 0 and they occurred in the same list. The third entry in Table 1 refers to the presentation of items 8 and 9 as a probe. Again the items were separated by 0 but they occurred initially in separate lists. Thus, the cues of context and list structure could be used to differentiate the items in the second case (the Cues Condition) but not in the first (No Cues Condition) . Note that the Cues/No Cues variable has no meaning for the Blank Condition as there was no list structure during presentation. The test probes were the same for all presentation conditions. Following each 24-item list there were two probe pairs, each consisting of the repetition of two items that had occurred in the preceding list. The S’s task was to choose the near item. The first probe corresponded to one of the eight problem types so that over the eight lists presented in a day each problem type occurred as a first probe. Similarly, each problem type occurred as a second probe with the position determined randomly except for the restriction that no position probed on the first test could occur as a probe on the second. The position of the correct stimulus in each pair was determined by a Gellermann (1933) series. Serial Position -

TABLE 1 of Test Item Pairs Corresponding to Each of the Eight Problem

Types

Position cues

Separation

No Cues (within list) Cues (between lists)

0 5 0 5

First half 7 10 8 6

Second half 8 16 9 12

15 17 16 14

16 23 17 20

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Each S was tested for 2 days, with 8 lists per day. With 20 Ss in each presentation condition the design resulted in 80 observations of each problem type within each presentation condition.

Results An inspection of the raw means revealed no apparent effects due to days, probe order, or sex. Therefore, in all subsequent analyses the data were collapsed across these variables. Also common to all analyses were the reliable main effects due to Separation and Position. Problems with Separation 5 were always reliably easier than problems with Separation 0. Also, problems in the second half of the list (short lag) were always reliably easier than problems in the first half (long lag). These effects of separation and lag have been found repeatedly with adult Ss (e.g., Yntema & Trask, 1963) and also with Ss of this age (Brown, 1973). Therefore, the F values will not be given for each analysis and these variables will not be discussed unless they interact with other variables. The proportions of correct responses for both second and fourth grade Ss are presented in Table 2. The data for the fourth grade Ss will be considered first, A 3 x 2 x 2 x 2 mixed analysis of variance was conducted on the error scores, with Presentation Condition (3) as the between-Ss variable and Cues (2), Separation (2), and Position (2) as within-Ss variables. The main effect of Presentation Condition was reliable (F( 2,57) = 10.83, p < .OOl), with more accurate performance in the Context than in the List Condition and poorest performance in the Blank Condition. The main effect of Cues was also reliable (F( 1,57) = 31.33, p < .OOl), with a mean of 0.75 for the Cues Condition compared with 0.64 for the No Cues Condition. TABLE 2 The Proportion of Correct Responses in Experiment 1 as a Function Presentation Condition, Cues, Separation, and Position Cues

Position 4th Grade Context Condition List Condition Blank Condition 2nd Grade Context Condition

No cues

Cues

Separation

of

0

5

0

5

1st

2nd

1st

2nd

1st

2nd

1st

2nd

Total

.80 .64 .48

.85 .65 .54

.94 .83 .63

.96 .90 .84

.50 .49 .49

.54 .48 .53

.70 .71 .69

.86 .83 .90

.77 .69 .63

.53

.65

.68

.80

.54

.53

.71

.90

.66

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The interaction of principal interest, Presentation Condition X Cues (F( 2,57) = 15.35, p < .OOl), is illustrated in Fig. 1. Here it can be seen that there were no differences between conditions for the NO Cues problems the ( within lists ) p ro bl ems, but for the Cues (between-list) Context Condition resulted in more accurate performance than the List Condition, which in turn resulted in better performance than the Blank Condition. Of interest is the fact that there were no differences between the Cues and the No Cues problems for the Blank Presentation Condition. This was expected as the Cues/No Cues distinction was meaningless for this condition where no list structure was presented. The Cues X Separation interaction was also significant (F( 1,57) = 4.37, p < .05). The addition of Cues was more helpful for the difficult 0 Separation problems (from 0.50 to 0.66 correct) than for the 5 Separation problems (from 0.79 to 0.85 correct). The second grade Ss were tested only in the Context Condition and these data are also presented in Table 2. It was apparent that the second grade Ss performed differently from the fourth grade Ss in the Context Condition. To verify this visual impression a 2 X 2 X 2 X 2 mixed analysis of variance was conducted on the error scores of the second and fourth .90 e

.60

c NO

CUES

CUES PROBLEM

TYPE

FIG. 1. The proportion of correct responses as a function and Cues for the fourth grade Ss of Experiment 1.

of Presentation

Condition

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.90

grade

4 ,’ I

.8S

.80

I

-75

.fO

.65

NO

CUES

CUES

FIG. 2. The proportion of correct responses as a function of Grade and Sues in the Context Condition of Experiment 1.

grade Ss in the Context Condition. The between-% variable was that of Grade level with Cues, Separation, and Position as the within& variables. The main effects of Grade and Cues were reliable [Grade, F( 1,s) = 15.16, p c .OOl; Cues, F(138) = 39.11, p < .001]. However, of main interest for this comparison was the Grade X Cues interaction ( F( 1,381 = 43.46, p < Ml), which is illustrated in Fig. 2. Here it can be seen that there were no apparent differences between Grade levels for the No Cues Condition but in the Cues Condition the fourth grade Ss performed reliably better. Inspection of I?& 2 also shows that there were no differences between the Cues/No CZES problems for second grade Ss. Apparently, the younger Ss were not using the avaiJabIe context cues, This was confirmed by the outcome of the Cues (2) x Separdion (2) x Position (2> X Subjects (20) factorial analysis of variance conducted on the second grade error scores. No main effects or interaction involving the Cues/No Cues variable were revealed. The second grade Ss appeared to perform like the fourth grade Ss in the Blank Condition. Thus, a final comparison was made between the second grade Context Condition and the fourth grade Blank Condition. A 2 x 2 X 2 X 2 mixed analysis of variance was conducted on the error scores, with Grade as the between-Ss variable and Cues, Separation, and

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Position as within-Ss variables. There were no significant main effects or interactions due to either Grade or Cues. The second grade Ss in the Context Condition performed like fourth grade Ss in the Blank Condition. Discussion Two main findings emerged from this study: the marked developmental difference in the use of context and list structure and the effects of the two kinds of cues on the performance of the older Ss. The latter point will be discussed first, followed by a consideration of the developmental implications. Consider first the fourth grade data. The provision of either a list structure or additional context cues dramatically improved recency judgments which are difficult when no spatial or contextual cues reinforced temporal succession (Brown, 1973). It is apparent that the older Ss were making efficient use of the available spatial or contextual list markers. As such, reliance on pure temporal judgments was not necessary in the Cues Condition. What was required was a list discrimination for the 24 items, with temporal order information only necessary for the position of the three lists. Thus, the provision of contextual or spatial cues as list markers aided the relative recency judgments required in the Cues Condition. However, in situations like the No Cues Condition, where serial position within a list was required, a more efficient mnemonic may be to provide one location for each item, the “method of loci,” or a version of the “pegword mnemonic system” (Bower & Reitman, 1972; Paivio, 1971). Whether such systems could be used by young children in order to make fine within-lists recency judgments remains to be seen. The present data suggest that the addition of context or spatial cues aids list discrimination (Anderson & Bower, 1972), which in turn aids judgments of comparative recency (Brown, 1973). The data can be explained in terms of Bower’s recent theory of encoding variability (Bower, 1972). Items are encoded together with certain list tags or markers which contain a complex set of contextual information concerning the conditions under which the items occurred. Subsequent differentiation between items in memory is based on retrieving and comparing the list markers associated with these items. The list markers can comprise specific contextual or temporal cues together with “random contextual drift,” i.e., information recording the gradual change in the prevailing context with the elapse of time and the occurrence of new items and events. The more dramatic the context cues, the more cues available and the easier it should be to make accurate list discriminations, Thus, in the present experiment the superiority of the Context (plus list) over the List Condition could be due to the fact that the additional context cues

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served as dramatic list markers which facilitated the association or unitization (Horowitz et al., 1969) of each item with its context. Alternatively, or additionally, it could be that the “method of loci” (Yates, 1966) characteristics of the Context Condition helped provide temporal order to the lists. The temporal order of the contexts in the journey “from the house, through the garden, and across the street” was stressed in pretraining. The separate contributions of these factors cannot be determined by the present data. However, it has clearly been shown that fourth grade Ss can use a simple form of mnemonic elaboration efficiently. A distinct developmental trend was apparent when second and fourth grade Ss were compared. Although there was no age effect on the No Cues problems, when spatial and contextual cues were unavailable, the second grade Ss, unlike the older children, were unable to benefit from the provision of the additional cues. One explanation of this finding is that the younger Ss would, indeed, benefit from the additional cues if they knew how to use them. However, the spontaneous use of mnemonics is not typical of Ss in this age range (Flavell, 1970; Meacham, 1972). Thus, the absence of an age effect on the No Cues problems would support the hypothesis (Brown, 1973; Brown & Scott, 1971) that developmental differences are not found in memory tasks which require no deliberate mnemonics, However, when mnemonic systems can be used effectively ( Cues problems) the younger children perform poorly because they fail to adopt the appropriate strategy. Whether the younger Ss can be trained to make effective use of mnemonic systems which they fail to adopt spontaneously will be considered in Experiment 2. EXPERIMENT

2

In Experiment 2 an attempt was made to train the use of mnemonic elaboration. Of particular theoretical relevance to such training studies is the distinction between mediational deficiencies and production deficiencies (Flavell, 1970). The deficiency is said to exist when the child performs poorly on a memory task because he fails to exploit the appropriate mnemonic mediators. If he can be trained to produce the required strategy a finer grained analysis of the deficiency becomes possible. For, if having produced the strategy, performance is not significantly altered, then the deficiency is said to be mediational, i.e., the child does not use the strategy to mediate performance. If, however, performance is mediated appropriately once the strategy is produced, then the initial deficiency is termed a production deficiency. The use of training techniques can provide some information concerning which deficiency is operating. If training works, then the initial deficiency was one of production. A problem exists in establishing the presence of a mediational

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deficiency, for if training does not alter performance, is this due to a mediational problem or inadequate training? This problem, which is a complex one (see Conrad, 1972 and Kingsley & Hagen, 1969), need not concern us here for the main aim of Experiment 2 was to ascertain whether a production deficiency was responsible for the poor performance of the younger Ss in Experiment 1 by providing training experience. Only when such training fails need the more complex issue be of concern. Training Ss to use memory strategies has been attempted successfully with both young children (Flavell, 1970) and retardates (Behnont & Butterfield, 1971). Although the majority of these studies concentrated on training rehearsal, Flavell and his co-workers have experimented with non-verbal mediators (Ryan, Hegion & Flavell, 1970). The present study was designed to extend these findings by attempting to train mnemonic elaboration. Method Subjects The Ss were 40 additional second grade children, 20 males and 20 females. They ranged in age from 6 yr 5 mo to 8 yr 2 mo, with a mean CA of 7 yr 4 mo. Apparatus and Stimulus Materials These were the same as in Experiment

1.

Procedure Pretraining. The Ss were randomly divided into two groups, the Trained and the Untrained groups. For both groups, pretraining consisted of three stages, The first stage was the initial familiarization with the apparatus where the doll’s journey (from the house, through the garden, and into the street) was explained by the E and imitated by the S, exactly as described in Experiment 1. The second stage for all Ss was a memory task. For the Trained group the memory task was designed to provide experience in comrecting an item with its context. The S was presented with two items (successively), one placed in the house and one in the street. On the test probe he was shown three items, the two just presented and a distractor, and he was required to choose “the picture that was in the house (street) .” Following three correct trials the inspection list was increased to four items, two in the house and two in the street. The test again consisted of three items, one from each location and a distractor. The S was required to choose “the picture that was in the house and the picture that was in the street.”

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Three correct trials were required at this stage. During this training the E stressed the connection between the items and their context and repeated the instruction “See how easy it is to remember where they were. Try to remember where, as it will help you in the game.” The memory task for the Untrained group was designed to provide comparable experience with the apparatus and the stimuli without stressing the association of items and contexts. Two items were placed on the apparatus, one in the house and one in the street, exactly as in the Trained Condition. The test again consisted of three items, the two presented items and a distractor. The S was required to choose the pictures he had seen before. As with the Trained group, three successful trials were followed by an increase to four inspection items, followed again by the simple recognition test. The instructions to the Untrained Ss were “See how easy it is to remember the pictures.” The relation between the items and their context was not mentioned. The third phase of pretraining consisted of recency judgment training,, similar to that described in Experiment 1, but using the apparatus. For the two-item lists, one was placed in the house and one in the street, etc. The inspection lists were increased to four and six items (half in each of the two locations) following two successive correct trials at each list length. The Ss were required to choose the near item exactly as in Experiment 1. The only difference between the Trained and Untrained groups was that the connection between the context and the item was stressed for the Trained group. Experimental

Session

The general procedure for both groups was similar to that described for the Context Condition of Experiment 1. At intervals the E reminded the Trained group to “remember if they were in the house or the street. It will help you.” However, the Untrained group were only told to “remember all the pictures. It will help you.” Changes in the general procedure were made in order to reduce the amount of testing for the younger Ss. Only two contexts were used. The first eight items were placed in the house and the second in the street. The remaining eight items were used as fillers, with the S merely required to label them. Thus, only 16 pictures were to-be-remembered items. The eight filler items were used to alleviate the problem of a recency effect with short lags between the initial presentation of the near item and the test. As the lag always exceeded ten items, the variable of first and second half of the list was dropped. The remaining variables of Separation (0 or 5) and Cues (Cues or No Cues) were retained, resulting in four problem types. Each S was tested for one

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day, randomly assigned to one of the two sets of eight lists. With two probes following each of S lists, the design yielded 4 observations per S on each of the 4 problem types. With 20 Ss in each group, there was a total of 80 observations of each problem type. Results The proportion of correct responses as a function of Training Condition and problem type are presented in Fig. 3. There appeared to be no effect of the additional cues in the Untrained Condition but in the Trained Condition performance was better when cues were added. A 2 x 2 x 2 mixed analysis of variance was conducted on the error scores, with Training Condition (2) as a between-Ss variable and Cues (2) and Separation (2) as within-Ss variables. All three main effects reached an acceptable level of significance [Training Condition ( F ( 1,38) = 14.73, p < .OOl); Cues ( F( 1,38) = 10.52, p < .005) ; Separation (F( 1,38) = 27.54, p < .OOl) 1. Confirming the visual impression of Figure 3, the interaction of Training Condition X Cues was reliable ( F( 1,38) = 10.52, p < .005). Discussion Young children who do not spontaneously use mnemonic elaboration can be trained to do so. This successful training study adds to the growing body of literature which suggests that the developmentally young can be trained

to use memory

field, 1971; Flavell, suggestion

strategies,

such as rehearsal

(Belmont

& ButterThe than a de-

1970), which they fail to exploit spontaneously.

is that a production

deficiency

is operating

rather

.,50 0

5

0

5

SEPARATION

FIG. 3. The proportion of correct responses in Experiment 2, as a function of Training Condition, Separation and Cues.

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ficiency of mediation (Flavell, 1970). Once the appropriate strategy is made available to the child he can and does use it to improve his memory for both items and their relative order, There are two questions which cannot be answered by the present data. First, although a new form of production deficiency in young children was established, it is difficult to specify the exact nature of that deficiency. The appropriate strategy, adopted spontaneously by the older Ss, appears to be composed of three components, The association between the items and their context must be established and retained, the relevance of the contextual information must be appreciated and, finally, the logic of the mnemonic at retrieval must be within the problem solving capacity of the child (i.e., he must be able to reason that if house precedes garden and if item A was in house and item B in garden, then item B must have been seen more recently). Given that the training technique was effective, it seems clear that the logic of the mnemonic presented no problem to the younger Ss. However, the training study still did not determine the exact locus of the original deficiency. It could be the case that the Ss failed to make the initial item-context associations, or having made them, failed to see the relevance of this information to the recency problem at hand. If items are automatically encoded together with contextual information contained in the list markers (Anderson & Bower, 1972; Bower, 1972), then the production deficiency must lie in the spontaneous use of the context cues to solve the problem. However, a test for incidental learning of the context-item association in the Untrained group or direct questioning of the Ss concerning their covert strategies would be needed before the exact nature of the production deficiency involved in this task could be specified. A second limitation of the present data is that the long term efficiency of such training techniques is not known. Previous research with training rehearsal would suggest that the younger Ss may abandon their newly acquired strategy if left to their own devices (Flavell, 1970). As suggested by Meacham (1972) in a recent review of Russian research in memory, a cognitive operation must be well established before it can be used spontaneously as part of the cognitive strategies available to the child. For “although in certain cases the activity may be sufficiently well structured that it can be induced by an experimenter, it may not possess the capability of being performed spontaneously” (Meacham, 1972). Research on the long term efficiency of training and generalizing mnemonic strategies is needed if educational applications are to be considered. A final point concerns the method of mnemonic elaboration used in these studies. It should be noted that even in the Training Condition of Experiment 2 the Ss were not explicitly instructed to imagine dramatic

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or bizarre interactions between the items and their contexts, a requirement of both the “method of loci” and the similar “Gorky Street Map” technique used by Luria’s mnemonist (Luria, 1968). Although recent evidence suggests that bizarreness may not be a factor, establishing an interactive relationship is thought to be important for mnemonic elaboration techniques ( Wollen, Weber & Lowry, 1972). Training Ss to use interactive images, particularly of the progressive elaboration type described by Bower and Reitman (1972) and Reese (1972) may lead to recall of even finer degrees of temporal separation. While the present data provide a clear demonstration of both the effectiveness of a simple mnemonic scheme and the short term efficiency of training techniques, it remains to be seen if more complex mnemonic systems can be used effectively by young Ss as an aid to difficult judgments of relative recency. REFERENCES ANDERSON, J. R., & BOWER, G. H. Recognition and retrieval processes in free recall. Psychological Review, 1972, 79, 97-123. BELMONT, J. M., & BU~RFIELD, E. C. Learning strategies as determinants of memory deficiencies. Cognitive Psychology, 1971, 2, 411420. BOWER, G. H. Analysis of a mnemonic device. American Scientist, 1970, 58, 496-510. BOWER, G. H. Stimulus-sampling theory of encoding variability. In A. W. Melton and E. Martin (Eds.), Coding processes in human memory. Washington: Winston & Sons, 1972. BOWER, G. H., & REITMAN, J. S. Mnemonic elaboration in multilist learning. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 1972, 11, 478-485. BROWN, A. L. Temporal and contextual cues as discriminative attributes in retardates’ recognition memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 1973, 98, I-13. BROWN, A. L. Judgments of recency for long sequences of pictures: The absence of a developmental trend. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 1973, 15, 473480. BROWN, A. L., & SCOTT, M. S. Recognition memory for pictures in preschool children. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 1971, 11, 401-412. CONRAD, R. The developmental role of vocalizing in short-term memory. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 1972, 11, 521-533. CROVITZ, H. F. Memory loci in artificial memory. Psychonomic Science, 1969, 16, 82-83. CROVITZ, H. F. Galton’s walk. New York: Harper Row, 1970. 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. FRAISSE, P. The psychology of time. New York: Harper & Row, 1963. HOLYOAK, K., HOGETERP, H., & YUILLE, J. C. A developmental comparison of verbal and pictorial mnemonics in paired-associate learning. JournaE of Experimental Child Psychology, 1972, 14, 53-65. HOROWITZ, L. M., LAMPEL, A. K., & TAKANISHI, R. N. The child’s memory for unitized scenes. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 1969, 8, 375-366.

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