Abstract
We ask the question: Which aspects of immediate memory performance improve with age? In two studies, we reexamine the widely held view that primary memory capacity estimates derived from children's immediate free recall are age invariant. This was done by assessing children's immediate free-recall accuracy while also measuring the order in which they elected to recall items (Experiment 1) and by encouraging children to begin free recall with items from towards the end of the presented list (Experiment 2). Across samples aged between 5 and 8 years we replicated the previously reported age-related changes in free-recall serial position functions when aggregated across all trials of the standard task, including an absence of age differences in the recency portion of this curve. However, we also show that this does not reflect the fact that primary memory capacity is constant across age. Instead, when we incorporate order of report information, clear age differences are evident in the recall of list-final items that are output at the start of a participant's response. In addition, the total amount that individuals recalled varied little across different types of free-recall tasks. These findings have clear implications for the use of immediate free recall as a means of providing potential indices of primary memory capacity and in the study of the development of immediate memory.
Highlights
The study of immediate memory has an extensive history in experimental psychology
The main aim of this first experiment was to examine the development of immediate free-recall performance and the extent to which this can be used to provide an index of children’s primary memory capacity
We tested the claim, made consistently in previous studies of children’s immediate free recall, that primary memory does not develop in middle childhood (De Alwis et al, 2009; Jablonski, 1974; Thurm & Glanzer, 1971)
Summary
James (1890) drew a distinction between “primary” and “secondary” memory, with the former referring to the subset of information that is currently available to conscious access and that can be immediately recalled as a result, and the latter being information that must be retrieved from “memory proper”. Subsequent authors subsumed this distinction into models of short-term and working memory (e.g., Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1968; Baddeley & Hitch, 1974), and one can certainly draw a parallel between the notion of primary memory and the concept of short-term memory as assessed by measures of immediate serial recall or so-called “simple span” tasks. The moral rights of the named author(s) have been asserted
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