Young Children's Remembering in Different Contexts: A Reinterpretation of Istomina's Study

Abstract

WEISSBERG, JILL A., and PARIS, ScoTT G. Young Children's Remembering in Different Contexts: A Reinterpretation of Istomina's Study. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1986, 57, 1123-1129. 2 important questions in the study of children's memory development are, At what age do children use deliberate strategies to aid recall? and What effect does the task context have on remembering? A study conducted in 1948 with Soviet children is often used to support the claims that children younger than 4 years of age do not use voluntary remembering, and that children recall better in play situations than in tasks where they are told to remember information. The present study improved on Istomina's experimental methods but failed to replicate her results. Children from 3 to 7 years of age were given 6 items to remember either in a direct lesson format (i.e., explicit memory requirement) or as part of games involving grocery shopping or puppet birthday parties. Recall improved with age, and subjects at all ages remembered more in the lesson than game contexts. Children who rehearsed items recalled more words than nonrehearsers. The effects of age and context on recall appear due to the fact that more children rehearsed items in the lesson than the game condition, and more older than younger children rehearsed words spontaneously. Children's understanding about the clarity of memory goals, the need to act, and understanding the instrumental value of rehearsal may have facilitated recall, while uncertain task goals, distraction, and processing load may have suppressed recall for young children, especially in the game condition.