Developmental Progression in Children’s Strategic Memory Regulation

Abstract

A developmental study was conducted that investigated 7- to 11- years-olds’ ability to strategically regulate their memory performance. The study, based on Koriat and Goldsmith’s (1996) theoretical framework, sought to stimulate strategic regulation processes. In order to do so, the threshold to provide or withhold answers was manipulated and included bonuses for correct responding and penalties for incorrect answers. Participants were shown a video concerning the production of sugar from beets and were individually interviewed a week later. Responses had to be made to both answerable and unanswerable questions in both an open-ended and a yes/no question format. The results revealed that depending on the question format, there were different effects of the threshold manipulations on the frequencies of correct, incorrect, and “I don’t know” responses. Although there were no differences in response behaviour between the 1:0 and 1:1 incentives conditions when the questions were open-ended, children were able to differentially respond to the two bonus-to-penalty ratios when the questions were in yes/no format. Consistently, there were no interactions between age and response threshold indicating that strategic regulation competencies develop slowly but continuously during the primary school years showing the first signs of emerging competencies from an age of 7 onwards.