- Email: [email protected]
Recall of related and unrelated lists by 2-year-olds
JOURNAL
OF EXPERIMENTAL
Recall
CHILD
of Related
SUSAN
GOLDBERG,
PSYCHOLOGY
and
18,
l-8
Unrelated
(1974)
Lists by
MARION
PERLMUTTER
University
of Massachusetts
AND
2-Year-Oldsl
NANCY
MYERS
Ten boys and 10 girls ages 2g3.5 months were tested individually on a memory task requiring free recall of two-item lists. Each of the three trials consisted of the randomly ordered presentation of six boxes each containing a pair of objects selected from three categories (food, animals, and utensils). For three of these pairs, the objects belonged to the same conceptual category. The remaining three pairs were formed of unrelated items from the same categories. No sex differences in response were noted nor did performance change systematically over trials. The mean number of correct responses and
the
mean
number
of correct
pairs
was
higher
for
related
items.
In addi-
tion, the children frequently reported the last object they saw first. There is ample evidence from research with adults and older children of a significant relationship between the organization of material to be remembered and amount of that material recalled. Adults remember more words from lists comprised of several conceptual categories than from lists of unrelated words, and recall related words together, i.e., “cluster” their recall categorically, even when the words have been presented randomly (e.g. Kintsch, 1970). Recently, by providing fourthgrade organizations to adults, and adult-organizations to fourth-graders, Liberty and Ornstein (1973) demonstrate further that changes in organization can result in changes in recall performance. Moreover, improved performance in memory tasks with increasing age is often attributed to improvement in the child’s ability to organize stimulus input. Many researchers, using subjects from kindergarten through grade 9, have reported increases in both clustering and recall with increasing age (Bousfield, Esterson & Whitmarsh, 1958 ; Vaughan, 1968 ; Cole, Frankel & Sharp, 1971; Wachs & Gruen, 1971; Kobasigawa & Middleton, 1972). However, organization and recall do not always vary concommitantly. Laurence (1966), using unrelated pictorial stimuli, found that although subjective organization did not increase with age, recall did. She ‘This
research
was
supported
by
a grant
from
the
Spencer
Foundation.
The
authors thank Marvin Daehler, Jerome Myers, and Jane Perlmutter for their helpful comments
on
the
manuscript.
Requests
for
reprints
should
be
sent
to
Nancy
A.
Myers, Department of Psychology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Mass. 01002. 1
Copyright 0 1974 by Academic Press, Inc. AII rights of reproduction in any form reserved.
2
GOLDBERG,
PERLMUTTER
AND
MYERS
also found that although &year-olds recalled significantly more items on categorically related than unrelated lists, 6-year-olds did not. Nelson (1969), too, found that both 5-year-olds and 8-year-olds used categorical organizat’ion, although the 8-year-olds recalled more categories and improved more over trials. Steinmetz and Battig (1969) did not observe any age related increases in organizational processes, although again, free recall performance improved. Even the 4-year-old children in their sample of 4-13-year-olds showed marked clustering and new-item-report strat,egies. Denney and Ziobrowski (1972) also clearly demonstrated that young children may differ from adults not in amount of organization, but in the use of different criteria to organize. Very few studies of free recall have been conducted with children below school age. In the first of a series of studies, Rossi and Rossi (1965) report that the “overwhelming majority” of 2-year-olds presented la-item lists were found to use clustering as an “exclusive” recall technique. A subsequent study, using materials which could be organized in a variety of ways, and in which Ss were grouped according to mental rather than chronological age (Rossi & Wittrock, 1971)) found that the most frequent organization in free recall at Mental Age 2 was rhyming; however, conceptual clustering was the second most frequent organization used at Mental Age 2 and its use increased with age. These studies suggest that 2-5-year-olds can use categorical organization in free recall. However, no indication is given of the actual number of items recalled by 2-year-old Ss, and our own pilot work using 6- and 12-item lists yielded extremely low levels of recall, too low for satisfactory clustering analysis. In this study, therefore, we use short (2-item) lists and ask simply: Do 2-year-old children remember categorically related material better than unrelated material? If 2-year-olds make use of these relationships to facilitate free recall, related lists should be recalled more readily. METHOD
Subjects Ten boys and ten girls ages 29-35 months were brought to the laboratory to participate in an extensive study of cognitive development in l-3-year-olds. The free recall memory task was one of several experimental games in which these children participated at different sessions. (An additional five Xs from the larger study who were engaged in the memory task were not included in this final sample: two because English was not their primary language and three because they did not complete the task.) Children of the appropriate age were located through local
ORGANIZED
RECALL
IN
TWO-YEAR-OLDS
birth records. Each child was tested individually by the same female experimenter.
3 with a parent present,
Materials The materials included three identical sets of six distinctively colored 2 X 2 X 8-in. boxes, and a collection of small objects attractive to children. Each box contained two objects which, if remembered, the child was allowed to keep. Six different object pairs were used. Three “related” pairs consisted of items from the same conceptual category: food (i.e., cookielollypop), animals (i.e., elephant-giraffe), and eating utensils (i.e., forkspoon). The remaining three “unrelated” pairs consisted of two items from different conceptual categories: food-animal (i.e., M&MS-lion) , foodutensil (i.e., apple-cup), and animal-utensil (i.e., dog-plate). There were no association norms available for these items for this age group, and no attempt was made to control for association value or labelability in this study. However, in pilot work for another experiment, Staub (1973) presented pictures of these stimuli to children the same age as our 8s and asked “What is this?” and “What goes with this one?” She found t’hat labels were readily produced for all pictures, and that “fork” and “spoon” were associated responses for a few children, but none of the other items were given in response to each other. Procedure The free recall task was generally presented toward the end of the series of experimental sessions in the larger project, so that when the child arrived for the free recall task, he or she was already familiar with the laboratory and the experimenter (ZC). On arrival, child and parent enterecl a playroom in which the child was allowed to play freely until he or she seemed comfortable and was willing to converse with E. Then, E invited the child to “play another game” in a nearby experimental room. The child and E sat across from each other at a low table, with the parent seated to the child’s side. The 18 boxes were stacked in order on E’s side of the table, and a brown paper bag for holding the objects to be taken home was taped to the table on the Ss side. A Sony cassette recorder out of sight on the floor below the table was used to record 8s verbalizations. The following instructions were given: See all these boxes? Each box has two things in it that are for YOU to take home if you can remember them, First I’ll show YOU what’s in each box and then if you can tell me what YOU saw, YOU can keep it. That bag is for holding the things that you remember and get to take home.” The E opened a practice box containing a plastic car and a plastic airplane and demonstrated the procedure. If 8 seemed reluctant to answer
4
GOLDBERG,
PERLMUTTER
AKD
MYERS
on the practice trial, the parent was asked to model the procedure for the child. During test trials the E held up each item in a box, one at a time, and allowed the child to name the object. If the child did not provide a label E named the object and encouraged the child to repeat it. Any name the child used was accepted unless it was the name or the category for the other item in the box. If, for example, the child said ‘%iger” for “lion,” “plate” for “dish, ” “candy” for ‘%U&Is, ” it was accepted. If, however, 8 said “fork” for “spoon” or “animal” for “elephant,” he was corrected. After the second item in a box was shown, E covered the box and said “Now you tell me, what’s in this box?” The child was allowed approximately 20 see to name the two items. When an object was remembered correctly, E said “Right” or “Good” and gave the child the object to put in his bag. After all 18 boxes were presented, E told &’ that the game was finished and the bag of toys was detached and given to the child. All responses, intrusions, and response latencies were read off the tape recording of the session, which was replayed after the session. Design The mixed experimental design consisted of one between-subjects variable (sex) and three within-subjects variables (trials, relationship of item-pairs, and category). The experimental sessions entailed three trials of different randomly ordered presentations of the six boxes. The order of presentation of the two items in a given box was random with the restriction that each item be shown first at least once. RESULTS
Percentage Correct Almost all children reported at least one item correctIy on each trial. In fact, the level of this correct single item recall was 93%. On only 25 of the 360 trials did the children fail to report at least one item correctly. On these 25 trials related lists had been presented 12 times and unrelated lists 13 times. The percentage of items and pairs reported correctly on unrelated and related lists are shown in Table 1. It may be seen that 82.78% and 70.55% of the related and unrelated items, respectively, and 71.11% and 49.44% of the related and unrelated pairs, respectively, were correctly reported. Analyses of variance on these two measures indicated that significantly more items (F(l,l9) = 9.52, p < .Ol) and significantly more pairs of items (F(lJ9) = 12.79, P < 905) were recalled correctly from related lists. In general, all three categories were remembered about equally well; neither the Category main effect nor the Category X List
ORGANIZED
RECALL
IN
TABLE PERCENTAGE
CORRECT UNRELATED
TWO-YEAR-OLDS
1
FOR DIFFERENT AND RELATED
CATXGORIES LISTS
AND
Percentageof items correct Unrelated lists
Related lists
Total
77.50
80.00
78.75
65.83 6S.33
86.67 Sl.67
76.25 75.00
Total
70.55
S2.7S
76.67
Percentageof pairs correct
49.44
71.11
60.28
Category Food Utensil Animal
interaction was significant. No systematic trials or sex effects nor significant interactions involving these variables were found on these two measures, or indeed on all subsequent measures reported below. Thus the data were collapsed over these variables. Intrusions A very low level of intrusion error was observed ; the mean number of intrusions produced by these Ss was 1.58 for all 18 trials. Not surprisingly, therefore, analyses of variance carried out on all intrusions, same category intrusions, and different category intrusions revealed no significant effects. Response Later&es For 18 of the 20 &, a crude measure of response latency for first and second responses was obtained from the tape recorder with a stop watch. Only six of 18 8s averaged shorter response latencies on the first items of related lists; however, 12 of 18 Ss averaged shorter response latencies on the second items of related lists compared to unrelated lists. An analysis was conducted for these 18 8s on the mean response latencies for first and second items of unrelated and categoiically related lists. The mean response latency for the first items reported was 2.47 set; for second items, the mean response latency was 6.05 sec. Thus, first items were reported significantly faster than second ones (B’(l,l7) = 9.63, p < .Ol). Moreover, although the mean response latencies of first items reported were about the same on unrelated and categorically related lists, 2.5 and 2.4 set, respectively, the response time for second items was much faster on related lists (4.89 set) than on unrelated lists (7.22 set) . This interaction closely approached significance at the .05 level (p(lJ7) = 4.18, p < .lO) *
6 Orcler
GOLDBERG,
PERLMUTTER
AKD
MYERS
of Recall
An analysis of variance was also carried out on the proportion of first items reported which were the last items presented. Most 8s showed a consistent tendency to report the last item first; 73% first responses were of this type. However, this reverse read-out tendency was clearly affected by list type; on unrelated lists 78% and on related lists only 68% of first responses were the last list item presented (P( 1,19) = 4.46, p < .05). DISCUSSIOX
Our results show quite clearly that the presence of a relation between items presented to 2-year-old children facilitates their free recall. They recall related lists far more completely. Further, the data at least strongly suggest that they report second items from related lists faster. Finally, the presence of a relation between items was shown to modify another report tendency: that of reporting the last list item first. Both Steinmetz and Battig (1969) and Wachs and Gruen (1971) have suggested that, with older children, if categories are recognized as such, the children will make use of them. Steinmetz and Battig constructed mixed lists in which half the items bore a categorical relation to each other, and half did not, and found obvious evidence that even their youngest age group of 4- and 5-year-olds recognized the categorically related words, reported them better, and clustered them as extensively as the older groups did, Wachs & Gruen (1971) found the complementary result that with very unfamiliar categories, the amount of clustering across ages was again similar. They found less clear age patterns in response to frequency of the words, but taken together with other developmental data (i.e., Bousfield et oz., 1958), conclude that young children, given highly familiar and strongly associated related words, will recognize the relat’ions and cluster items in free recall. We have shown the further generality of that statement,. Given very familiar and highly associated categorical items, even 2-year-old children have the ability to utilize already recognized relationships to serve memory. Of course, Rossi and Rossi (1965) predicted and found that children would cluster categorically as soon as they could talk. They used a list of 12 high-frequency items comprising four familiar categories, and reported significant clustering levels at all ages from 2-5 years, and no increase in clustering with age. Unfortunately, no breakdown is given for specific category recall; the children may, for instance, have recalled all food items, but only food items. By contrasting performance on equallength lists, composed of the same categories and differing only in itemrelationship, our dat#a tell us t,hat 2-year-olds actually remember cate-
ORGANIZED
RECALL
IK
TWO-YEAR-OLDS
7
gorically related materials better than unrelated ones, thus extending the Rossi findings. Because of the unequal number of contributions to each mean latency score, the response latency data are at best suggestive. However, they are consistent with the recent Kobasigawa and Orr (1973) results in a study of kindergarten children’s free recall of 16 items, presented either in four category sets, or four sets of four items, one from each category. The categorized presentation not only increased the number of it.ems recalled, but the speed with which items were recalled, Also, clustering in recall showed shorter within-category intervals than between-category intervals, comparable to the different latencies for second responses we observed on our relat#ed and unrelated lists. Finally, some comment about the order of report would seem appropriate. The Ss tended to report first the last item presented, especially on unrelated lists. This tendency may be functionally equivalent to the priorit’y in free recall of newly learned items reported by Steinmetz and Battig (1969) in their task. That the nature of the material to be remembered affects this order of report is evident in the decreased reporting of last items first with related lists. In summary, our data would seem to point to a conceptualization of memory in the 2-year-old that includes limited capacity and the use of some relations existing between items. While t,he almost perfect level of correct first item reporting on both unrelated and related lists argues for at least this very minimum free recall capacity, second item recall was consiclerably less than complete. More interestingly, the presence of a relation between items facilitated this second item recall, decreasecl latency for second responses, and affected the order of report, thus inclieating that these 2-year-old children were making use of these relations to serve memory. REFERENCES W. A., ESTERSOK, S., & WHITMARSH, G. A. A study of developmental changes in conceptual and perceptual associative clustering. JownuZ of Genetic PsychoZogy, 1958,92, 95-102. COLE. M., FR4ivIcEL, F., & SHARP, D. Development of free recall learning in children. Developmentcd Psychology, 1971, 4, 109-123. DENXEY, Y. W., & ZIOBROWSKI, M. Developmental changes in clustering criteria. Jow-r~~l oj Experimental Child Psychology, 1972, 13, 275-282. KINTSCH, W. Learning memory and concep&al processes. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1970. KoB.~sIG.~~~, A., & MIDDLETON~ D. B. Free recall of categorized items by children at three grade levels. Child Development, 1972,43, 1067-1072. KOB.~SIG.~~A. L4., & ORR, R. Free recall and retrieval speed of categorized items by BOUSFIELD,
8
GOLDBERG,
PERLMVTTER
AND
MYERS
kindergarten children. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 1973, 15, 187-192. LAURENCE, M. W. Age differences in performance and subjective organization in free-recall learning of pictorial material. Cunadian Journal of Psychology, 1966, 20, 388-399. LAURENCE, M. W. A developmental look at the usefulness of list categorization as an aid to free recall. Canadian Journal oj Psychology, 1967, 21, 153-165. LIBERTY, C., & ORNSTEIN, P. A. Age differences in organization and recall, the effects of training in categorization. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 1973, 15, 169-186. NELSON, K. J. The organization of free recall by young children. Journal 01 Experimental Child Psychology, 1969, 8,284-295. ROSSI, E. L., & Ross, S. I. Concept utilization serial order and recall in nursery school children. Child Development, 1965, 36, 771-779. ROSSI, S., & WITTROCK, M. C. Developmental shifts in verbal recall between menta1 ages two and five. Child Development, 1971,42, 333-338. STAUB, S. The effect of three types of relationships on young children’s memory for pictorial stimulus pairs. Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation submitted to graduate school of Education, Harvard University, 1973. STEINMETZ, J. I., & BATFIG, W. F. Clustering and priority of free recall of newly learned items in children. Developmental Psychology, 1969, 1, 503-507. VAUGHAN, M. E. Clustering, age and incidental learning. Journal oj Experimentul ChiZd PsychoZogy, 1968,6, 323-334. WACHS, T. D., & GRUEN, G. E. The effects of chronological age, trials, and list characteristics upon children’s category clustering. Child Development, 1971, 42, 1217-1228.
OF EXPERIMENTAL
Recall
CHILD
of Related
SUSAN
GOLDBERG,
PSYCHOLOGY
and
18,
l-8
Unrelated
(1974)
Lists by
MARION
PERLMUTTER
University
of Massachusetts
AND
2-Year-Oldsl
NANCY
MYERS
Ten boys and 10 girls ages 2g3.5 months were tested individually on a memory task requiring free recall of two-item lists. Each of the three trials consisted of the randomly ordered presentation of six boxes each containing a pair of objects selected from three categories (food, animals, and utensils). For three of these pairs, the objects belonged to the same conceptual category. The remaining three pairs were formed of unrelated items from the same categories. No sex differences in response were noted nor did performance change systematically over trials. The mean number of correct responses and
the
mean
number
of correct
pairs
was
higher
for
related
items.
In addi-
tion, the children frequently reported the last object they saw first. There is ample evidence from research with adults and older children of a significant relationship between the organization of material to be remembered and amount of that material recalled. Adults remember more words from lists comprised of several conceptual categories than from lists of unrelated words, and recall related words together, i.e., “cluster” their recall categorically, even when the words have been presented randomly (e.g. Kintsch, 1970). Recently, by providing fourthgrade organizations to adults, and adult-organizations to fourth-graders, Liberty and Ornstein (1973) demonstrate further that changes in organization can result in changes in recall performance. Moreover, improved performance in memory tasks with increasing age is often attributed to improvement in the child’s ability to organize stimulus input. Many researchers, using subjects from kindergarten through grade 9, have reported increases in both clustering and recall with increasing age (Bousfield, Esterson & Whitmarsh, 1958 ; Vaughan, 1968 ; Cole, Frankel & Sharp, 1971; Wachs & Gruen, 1971; Kobasigawa & Middleton, 1972). However, organization and recall do not always vary concommitantly. Laurence (1966), using unrelated pictorial stimuli, found that although subjective organization did not increase with age, recall did. She ‘This
research
was
supported
by
a grant
from
the
Spencer
Foundation.
The
authors thank Marvin Daehler, Jerome Myers, and Jane Perlmutter for their helpful comments
on
the
manuscript.
Requests
for
reprints
should
be
sent
to
Nancy
A.
Myers, Department of Psychology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Mass. 01002. 1
Copyright 0 1974 by Academic Press, Inc. AII rights of reproduction in any form reserved.
2
GOLDBERG,
PERLMUTTER
AND
MYERS
also found that although &year-olds recalled significantly more items on categorically related than unrelated lists, 6-year-olds did not. Nelson (1969), too, found that both 5-year-olds and 8-year-olds used categorical organizat’ion, although the 8-year-olds recalled more categories and improved more over trials. Steinmetz and Battig (1969) did not observe any age related increases in organizational processes, although again, free recall performance improved. Even the 4-year-old children in their sample of 4-13-year-olds showed marked clustering and new-item-report strat,egies. Denney and Ziobrowski (1972) also clearly demonstrated that young children may differ from adults not in amount of organization, but in the use of different criteria to organize. Very few studies of free recall have been conducted with children below school age. In the first of a series of studies, Rossi and Rossi (1965) report that the “overwhelming majority” of 2-year-olds presented la-item lists were found to use clustering as an “exclusive” recall technique. A subsequent study, using materials which could be organized in a variety of ways, and in which Ss were grouped according to mental rather than chronological age (Rossi & Wittrock, 1971)) found that the most frequent organization in free recall at Mental Age 2 was rhyming; however, conceptual clustering was the second most frequent organization used at Mental Age 2 and its use increased with age. These studies suggest that 2-5-year-olds can use categorical organization in free recall. However, no indication is given of the actual number of items recalled by 2-year-old Ss, and our own pilot work using 6- and 12-item lists yielded extremely low levels of recall, too low for satisfactory clustering analysis. In this study, therefore, we use short (2-item) lists and ask simply: Do 2-year-old children remember categorically related material better than unrelated material? If 2-year-olds make use of these relationships to facilitate free recall, related lists should be recalled more readily. METHOD
Subjects Ten boys and ten girls ages 29-35 months were brought to the laboratory to participate in an extensive study of cognitive development in l-3-year-olds. The free recall memory task was one of several experimental games in which these children participated at different sessions. (An additional five Xs from the larger study who were engaged in the memory task were not included in this final sample: two because English was not their primary language and three because they did not complete the task.) Children of the appropriate age were located through local
ORGANIZED
RECALL
IN
TWO-YEAR-OLDS
birth records. Each child was tested individually by the same female experimenter.
3 with a parent present,
Materials The materials included three identical sets of six distinctively colored 2 X 2 X 8-in. boxes, and a collection of small objects attractive to children. Each box contained two objects which, if remembered, the child was allowed to keep. Six different object pairs were used. Three “related” pairs consisted of items from the same conceptual category: food (i.e., cookielollypop), animals (i.e., elephant-giraffe), and eating utensils (i.e., forkspoon). The remaining three “unrelated” pairs consisted of two items from different conceptual categories: food-animal (i.e., M&MS-lion) , foodutensil (i.e., apple-cup), and animal-utensil (i.e., dog-plate). There were no association norms available for these items for this age group, and no attempt was made to control for association value or labelability in this study. However, in pilot work for another experiment, Staub (1973) presented pictures of these stimuli to children the same age as our 8s and asked “What is this?” and “What goes with this one?” She found t’hat labels were readily produced for all pictures, and that “fork” and “spoon” were associated responses for a few children, but none of the other items were given in response to each other. Procedure The free recall task was generally presented toward the end of the series of experimental sessions in the larger project, so that when the child arrived for the free recall task, he or she was already familiar with the laboratory and the experimenter (ZC). On arrival, child and parent enterecl a playroom in which the child was allowed to play freely until he or she seemed comfortable and was willing to converse with E. Then, E invited the child to “play another game” in a nearby experimental room. The child and E sat across from each other at a low table, with the parent seated to the child’s side. The 18 boxes were stacked in order on E’s side of the table, and a brown paper bag for holding the objects to be taken home was taped to the table on the Ss side. A Sony cassette recorder out of sight on the floor below the table was used to record 8s verbalizations. The following instructions were given: See all these boxes? Each box has two things in it that are for YOU to take home if you can remember them, First I’ll show YOU what’s in each box and then if you can tell me what YOU saw, YOU can keep it. That bag is for holding the things that you remember and get to take home.” The E opened a practice box containing a plastic car and a plastic airplane and demonstrated the procedure. If 8 seemed reluctant to answer
4
GOLDBERG,
PERLMUTTER
AKD
MYERS
on the practice trial, the parent was asked to model the procedure for the child. During test trials the E held up each item in a box, one at a time, and allowed the child to name the object. If the child did not provide a label E named the object and encouraged the child to repeat it. Any name the child used was accepted unless it was the name or the category for the other item in the box. If, for example, the child said ‘%iger” for “lion,” “plate” for “dish, ” “candy” for ‘%U&Is, ” it was accepted. If, however, 8 said “fork” for “spoon” or “animal” for “elephant,” he was corrected. After the second item in a box was shown, E covered the box and said “Now you tell me, what’s in this box?” The child was allowed approximately 20 see to name the two items. When an object was remembered correctly, E said “Right” or “Good” and gave the child the object to put in his bag. After all 18 boxes were presented, E told &’ that the game was finished and the bag of toys was detached and given to the child. All responses, intrusions, and response latencies were read off the tape recording of the session, which was replayed after the session. Design The mixed experimental design consisted of one between-subjects variable (sex) and three within-subjects variables (trials, relationship of item-pairs, and category). The experimental sessions entailed three trials of different randomly ordered presentations of the six boxes. The order of presentation of the two items in a given box was random with the restriction that each item be shown first at least once. RESULTS
Percentage Correct Almost all children reported at least one item correctIy on each trial. In fact, the level of this correct single item recall was 93%. On only 25 of the 360 trials did the children fail to report at least one item correctly. On these 25 trials related lists had been presented 12 times and unrelated lists 13 times. The percentage of items and pairs reported correctly on unrelated and related lists are shown in Table 1. It may be seen that 82.78% and 70.55% of the related and unrelated items, respectively, and 71.11% and 49.44% of the related and unrelated pairs, respectively, were correctly reported. Analyses of variance on these two measures indicated that significantly more items (F(l,l9) = 9.52, p < .Ol) and significantly more pairs of items (F(lJ9) = 12.79, P < 905) were recalled correctly from related lists. In general, all three categories were remembered about equally well; neither the Category main effect nor the Category X List
ORGANIZED
RECALL
IN
TABLE PERCENTAGE
CORRECT UNRELATED
TWO-YEAR-OLDS
1
FOR DIFFERENT AND RELATED
CATXGORIES LISTS
AND
Percentageof items correct Unrelated lists
Related lists
Total
77.50
80.00
78.75
65.83 6S.33
86.67 Sl.67
76.25 75.00
Total
70.55
S2.7S
76.67
Percentageof pairs correct
49.44
71.11
60.28
Category Food Utensil Animal
interaction was significant. No systematic trials or sex effects nor significant interactions involving these variables were found on these two measures, or indeed on all subsequent measures reported below. Thus the data were collapsed over these variables. Intrusions A very low level of intrusion error was observed ; the mean number of intrusions produced by these Ss was 1.58 for all 18 trials. Not surprisingly, therefore, analyses of variance carried out on all intrusions, same category intrusions, and different category intrusions revealed no significant effects. Response Later&es For 18 of the 20 &, a crude measure of response latency for first and second responses was obtained from the tape recorder with a stop watch. Only six of 18 8s averaged shorter response latencies on the first items of related lists; however, 12 of 18 Ss averaged shorter response latencies on the second items of related lists compared to unrelated lists. An analysis was conducted for these 18 8s on the mean response latencies for first and second items of unrelated and categoiically related lists. The mean response latency for the first items reported was 2.47 set; for second items, the mean response latency was 6.05 sec. Thus, first items were reported significantly faster than second ones (B’(l,l7) = 9.63, p < .Ol). Moreover, although the mean response latencies of first items reported were about the same on unrelated and categorically related lists, 2.5 and 2.4 set, respectively, the response time for second items was much faster on related lists (4.89 set) than on unrelated lists (7.22 set) . This interaction closely approached significance at the .05 level (p(lJ7) = 4.18, p < .lO) *
6 Orcler
GOLDBERG,
PERLMUTTER
AKD
MYERS
of Recall
An analysis of variance was also carried out on the proportion of first items reported which were the last items presented. Most 8s showed a consistent tendency to report the last item first; 73% first responses were of this type. However, this reverse read-out tendency was clearly affected by list type; on unrelated lists 78% and on related lists only 68% of first responses were the last list item presented (P( 1,19) = 4.46, p < .05). DISCUSSIOX
Our results show quite clearly that the presence of a relation between items presented to 2-year-old children facilitates their free recall. They recall related lists far more completely. Further, the data at least strongly suggest that they report second items from related lists faster. Finally, the presence of a relation between items was shown to modify another report tendency: that of reporting the last list item first. Both Steinmetz and Battig (1969) and Wachs and Gruen (1971) have suggested that, with older children, if categories are recognized as such, the children will make use of them. Steinmetz and Battig constructed mixed lists in which half the items bore a categorical relation to each other, and half did not, and found obvious evidence that even their youngest age group of 4- and 5-year-olds recognized the categorically related words, reported them better, and clustered them as extensively as the older groups did, Wachs & Gruen (1971) found the complementary result that with very unfamiliar categories, the amount of clustering across ages was again similar. They found less clear age patterns in response to frequency of the words, but taken together with other developmental data (i.e., Bousfield et oz., 1958), conclude that young children, given highly familiar and strongly associated related words, will recognize the relat’ions and cluster items in free recall. We have shown the further generality of that statement,. Given very familiar and highly associated categorical items, even 2-year-old children have the ability to utilize already recognized relationships to serve memory. Of course, Rossi and Rossi (1965) predicted and found that children would cluster categorically as soon as they could talk. They used a list of 12 high-frequency items comprising four familiar categories, and reported significant clustering levels at all ages from 2-5 years, and no increase in clustering with age. Unfortunately, no breakdown is given for specific category recall; the children may, for instance, have recalled all food items, but only food items. By contrasting performance on equallength lists, composed of the same categories and differing only in itemrelationship, our dat#a tell us t,hat 2-year-olds actually remember cate-
ORGANIZED
RECALL
IK
TWO-YEAR-OLDS
7
gorically related materials better than unrelated ones, thus extending the Rossi findings. Because of the unequal number of contributions to each mean latency score, the response latency data are at best suggestive. However, they are consistent with the recent Kobasigawa and Orr (1973) results in a study of kindergarten children’s free recall of 16 items, presented either in four category sets, or four sets of four items, one from each category. The categorized presentation not only increased the number of it.ems recalled, but the speed with which items were recalled, Also, clustering in recall showed shorter within-category intervals than between-category intervals, comparable to the different latencies for second responses we observed on our relat#ed and unrelated lists. Finally, some comment about the order of report would seem appropriate. The Ss tended to report first the last item presented, especially on unrelated lists. This tendency may be functionally equivalent to the priorit’y in free recall of newly learned items reported by Steinmetz and Battig (1969) in their task. That the nature of the material to be remembered affects this order of report is evident in the decreased reporting of last items first with related lists. In summary, our data would seem to point to a conceptualization of memory in the 2-year-old that includes limited capacity and the use of some relations existing between items. While t,he almost perfect level of correct first item reporting on both unrelated and related lists argues for at least this very minimum free recall capacity, second item recall was consiclerably less than complete. More interestingly, the presence of a relation between items facilitated this second item recall, decreasecl latency for second responses, and affected the order of report, thus inclieating that these 2-year-old children were making use of these relations to serve memory. REFERENCES W. A., ESTERSOK, S., & WHITMARSH, G. A. A study of developmental changes in conceptual and perceptual associative clustering. JownuZ of Genetic PsychoZogy, 1958,92, 95-102. COLE. M., FR4ivIcEL, F., & SHARP, D. Development of free recall learning in children. Developmentcd Psychology, 1971, 4, 109-123. DENXEY, Y. W., & ZIOBROWSKI, M. Developmental changes in clustering criteria. Jow-r~~l oj Experimental Child Psychology, 1972, 13, 275-282. KINTSCH, W. Learning memory and concep&al processes. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1970. KoB.~sIG.~~~, A., & MIDDLETON~ D. B. Free recall of categorized items by children at three grade levels. Child Development, 1972,43, 1067-1072. KOB.~SIG.~~A. L4., & ORR, R. Free recall and retrieval speed of categorized items by BOUSFIELD,
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kindergarten children. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 1973, 15, 187-192. LAURENCE, M. W. Age differences in performance and subjective organization in free-recall learning of pictorial material. Cunadian Journal of Psychology, 1966, 20, 388-399. LAURENCE, M. W. A developmental look at the usefulness of list categorization as an aid to free recall. Canadian Journal oj Psychology, 1967, 21, 153-165. LIBERTY, C., & ORNSTEIN, P. A. Age differences in organization and recall, the effects of training in categorization. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 1973, 15, 169-186. NELSON, K. J. The organization of free recall by young children. Journal 01 Experimental Child Psychology, 1969, 8,284-295. ROSSI, E. L., & Ross, S. I. Concept utilization serial order and recall in nursery school children. Child Development, 1965, 36, 771-779. ROSSI, S., & WITTROCK, M. C. Developmental shifts in verbal recall between menta1 ages two and five. Child Development, 1971,42, 333-338. STAUB, S. The effect of three types of relationships on young children’s memory for pictorial stimulus pairs. Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation submitted to graduate school of Education, Harvard University, 1973. STEINMETZ, J. I., & BATFIG, W. F. Clustering and priority of free recall of newly learned items in children. Developmental Psychology, 1969, 1, 503-507. VAUGHAN, M. E. Clustering, age and incidental learning. Journal oj Experimentul ChiZd PsychoZogy, 1968,6, 323-334. WACHS, T. D., & GRUEN, G. E. The effects of chronological age, trials, and list characteristics upon children’s category clustering. Child Development, 1971, 42, 1217-1228.