Young children's use of spatial categorization as a mnemonic strategy

Abstract

The interdependence of knowledge and strategic behavior is becoming increasingly well established. The purpose of this research was to determine whether young children could use spatial categorization—a cognitive skill well within the repertoire of even 2-year-olds—as a mnemonic strategy. The results of three studies revealed that young children are capable of spatially organizing objects as a strategy in the service of future retrieval. There were clear developmental trends in the strategic deployment of categorization. Although there was some evidence of the mnemonic use of perceptually defined categories by 2- and 3-year-olds, these children rarely executed the strategy effectively. Four-year-old children were quite successful at exploiting perceptually defined categories to aid retrieval. By five years of age, children were able, in addition, to actively construct physical categories based on an internal representation and use them in the service of memory.