Cognitive flexibility and strategy training allow young children to overcome transfer-Utilization Deficiencies

Abstract

Despite children’s successful transfer of memory strategies to new, similar tasks, strategy effectiveness often decreases at transfer, resulting in lower recall than on the original task (transfer-Utilization Deficiency, t-UD). Two experiments showed t-UDs in two different tasks and three strategies. Moreover, executive function was related to t-UDs. Experiments 1 (N = 68) and 2 (N = 72) showed that cognitive flexibility predicted recall at transfer with a rehearsal strategy and two organization strategies--sorting at encoding and clustering at recall. Furthermore, explicit memory-strategy training prevented the emergence of t-UDs in Experiment 1 and, somewhat, in Experiment 2. Thus, t-UDs emerge across various tasks and strategies, and are decreased by cognitive flexibility and strategy training. These results contribute to our understanding of the development of transfer and of strategy development.