Cognitive Integration in Children's Memory for Sentences and Pictures

Abstract

PARIS, ScoTT G., and MAHONEY, GERALD J. Cognitive Integration in Children's Memory for Sentences and Pictures. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1974, 45, 633-642. This study investigated the manner in which 7-11-year-old children abstracted and retained information from sets of pictures and sentences. A recognition memory task was employed to index subjects' implicit construction and retention of inferential spatial relationships. The recognition items included original sentences and pictures, implied relationships, and false relationships. It was observed that children had considerable difficulty differentiating old items from novel test items which preserved consistent semantic relationships, but they could readily discriminate false items which violated expressed or implied relationships. The results are discussed in terms of children's construction and retention of underlying relationships abstracted from visual and verbal information.