The development of young children's memory strategies: Evidence from the Würzburg Longitudinal Memory Study

Abstract

This article reports findings of the Würzburg Longitudinal Memory Study, which focused on children's verbal memory development. The study started with 100 kindergarten children who were tested on various memory measures, including sort-recall, text recall, short-term memory capacity, and metamemory. Assessments were repeated nine times, with adjacent measurement points separated by 6-month time intervals. The main goals of the study concerned the strategy acquisition process (gradual vs. abrupt), the assessment of utilization deficiencies, and the impact of multiple strategy use during the course of strategy development. Findings showed pronounced interindividual differences in strategy acquisition. However, semantic organization strategies were acquired rapidly (and not gradually) in most cases. Moreover, although strategy discovery was not always accompanied by superior recall, utilization deficiency problems were comparably rare throughout the course of the study. Multiple strategy use turned out to be important in that, from the very beginning onwards, those children who used two or more memory strategies substantially outperformed their peers who used fewer than two strategies.