A longitudinal study of young children's memory behavior and performance in a sort-recall task

Abstract

One hundred and sixty-nine children were tested twice, at the ages of about 4 and 6 years, for their recall of a list of clusterable objects, following either play-and-remember or sort-and-remember instructions, and were assessed for their metamemory of the efficacy of conceptual and perceptual sorting strategies. In addition, an independent sample of 30 4-year-olds was tested twice within a time interval of 2 weeks to assess short-term stability of the memory measures. The main developmental trends reported in cross-sectional studies of preschoolers' memory were replicated. Conceptual clustering during recall significantly predicted recall performance in 6-year-olds, regardless of instructional condition, whereas in 4-year-olds verbal IQ and conceptual clustering predicted recall only under sort-and-remember instructional conditions, memory span being the only significant predictor under play-and-remember instructions. Although the short-term stabilities of all variables except for metamemory were high, over the 2-year period under study the stabilities of the memory variables were low with the exception of free recall. An analysis of individual stabilities showed that the more children recalled at age 4 the more stable their recall was over the 2-year period. These results indicate that although memory behavior and performance may be considerably less stable in the preschool than in the elementary school years, differential patterns may emerge at an early age.