The emergence of the word length effect in young children: The effects of overt and covert rehearsal

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of training 5‐year‐olds to carry out both overt and covert rehearsal in a serial order recall task. As the superior recall for short words versus long words in adults is attributed to the use of verbal rehearsal, it was hypothesized that young children who do not normally show these effects would do so when trained to rehearse. Both overt and covert rehearsal were found to be equally effective in producing a word length effect, and these results were taken as supportive of the view that such effects are due to verbal rehearsal. It was also concluded that when instructed to do so 5‐year‐olds can make effective use of inner speech in serial order recall tasks.