Abstract
Both adults and children –by the time they are 2–3 years old– have a general ability to recode information to increase memory efficiency. This paper aims to evaluate the ability of untrained children aged 6–10 years old to deploy such a recoding process in immediate memory. A large sample of 374 children were given a task of immediate serial report based on SIMON®, a classic memory game made of four colored buttons (red, green, yellow, blue) requiring players to reproduce a sequence of colors within which repetitions eventually occur. It was hypothesized that a primitive ability across all ages (since theoretically already available in toddlers) to detect redundancies allows the span to increase whenever information can be recoded on the fly. The chunkable condition prompted the formation of chunks based on the perceived structure of color repetition within to-be-recalled sequences of colors. Our result shows a similar linear improvement of memory span with age for both chunkable and non-chunkable conditions. The amount of information retained in immediate memory systematically increased for the groupable sequences across all age groups, independently of the average age-group span that was measured on sequences that contained fewer repetitions. This result shows that chunking gives young children an equal benefit as older children. We discuss the role of recoding in the expansion of capacity in immediate memory and the potential role of data compression in the formation of chunks in long-term memory.
Highlights
Specialty section: This article was submitted to Cognition, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology
This paper aims to evaluate the ability of untrained children aged 6–10 years old to deploy such a recoding process in immediate memory
Children were administered a task of immediate serial report inspired of the SIMON, a memory game made of four colored buttons requiring players to reproduce a sequence of colors within which repetitions could occur to induce a recoding process on the fly
Summary
Specialty section: This article was submitted to Cognition, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology. The ability to recode rapidly inputs made of identical constituents (000.111), regular series (123.321) or known material (e.g., 25.12.1986, your favorite Christmas year) has long been studied to account for the recall of information over short intervals (Miller, 1956, 1958; Bower and Winzenz, 1969; Bor and Owen, 2007; Farrell, 2012; Mathy and Feldman, 2012; Mathy and Varré, 2013) This ability to chunk inputs has been thought to alleviate capacity limits in adults (Cowan, 2001; Cowan et al, 2004), it does not constitute a full explanation of capacity increases in immediate memory observed in children (Gilchrist et al, 2009), or age-related declines in immediate memory (Naveh-Benjamin et al, 2007; Gilchrist et al, 2008). These newly formed words can be used to chunk the previously encountered subsequences in a new input stream presenting the same statistical patterns
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
