Training Self-checking Routines for Estimating Test Readiness: Generalization from List Learning to Prose Recall

Abstract

BROWN, ANN L.; CAMPIONE, JOSEPH C.; and BARCLAY, CRAIG R. Training Self-checking Routines for Estimating Test Readiness: Generalization from List Learning to Prose Recall. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1979, 50, 501-512. Brown and Barclay trained educable rearded children to use either of 2 memory strategies, anticipation or rehearsal, involving a self-checking component. Following the training, both their free-recall performance and their ability to estimate their readiness for a recall test improved significantly. In the present research, the same students were tested for maintenance and generalization 1 year following the original training. The younger children (MA = 6 years) showed no effects of the training, whereas an older group (MA = 8 years) both maintained the trained strategies on the original rote-recall task and generalized it effectively to a novel situation involving gist recall of prose passages. In comparison to a pair of control groups, the students trained in the use of self-checking routines took more time studying, recalled more idea units from the passages, and, further, their recall was more clearly related to the thematic importance of the constituent idea units, a pattern characteristic of developmentally more advanced subjects.