Self-reported memory strategies and their relationship to immediate and delayed text recall and working memory capacity

Abstract

The aim of this study was to examine the performance of fifth-grade children in the reproduction of the content of a new text directly after they had read it (immediate recall) and one week later (delayed recall), as well as to investigate the relationship between performance, self-reported memory strategies, and working memory capacity (WMC). The results revealed that more complex strategies are associated with better performances, and that children with a high WMC outperformed children with a lower WMC in immediate and delayed text recall tasks. Hierarchical regression analyses showed that memory strategy and WMC are the strongest predictors for both immediate and delayed recall tasks. It is argued that one can use self-reported memory strategies to estimate strategy proficiency. Awareness of the importance of memory strategies and children's WMC in education are further discussed.