Self-reference encoding and incidental recall by children

Abstract

Free recall of trait-descriptive adjectives by children in kindergarten, first grade, and fourth grade was studied within an incidental-memory paradigm. Performance was compared after three different orienting-task/encoding questions: “Does this word describe you?” (self-reference), “Is this a nice word?” (semantic), and “Does this word have an ‘s’ sound?” (physical). The trait-recall task was nondiscriminatively difficult for the kindergartners. Recall in the self-reference condition increased over age, and by the fourth grade, the children showed an adult pattern of greater recall in the self-reference condition than in the other two conditions.