Rossi, SHEILA, and WITTROCK, M. C. Developmental Shifts in Verbal Recall between Mental Ages Two and Five. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1971, 42, 333-338. A developmental progression in children's bases for organizing words in free recall was investigated. The hypothesized developmental progression began with rhyming responses peaking at MA 2, followed by syntactical, clustering, and serial ordering responses reaching their peaks at MA 3, MA 4, and MA 5, respectively. 2 stimulus lists of 12 words were presented individually to 144 children. It was found as hypothesized that in free recall: (1) rhyming reached its peak proportion at MA 2; (2) syntactical responses reached their highest proportion at MA 3; (3) clustering reached its peak proportion at MA 4; (4) serial ordering reached its peak at MA 5; (5) clustering showed a positive linear trend with intelligence; (6) intrusions showed a negative linear trend with intelligence; and (7) the most frequent responses at a given age were rhyming at MA 2, clustering at MA 3 and 4, and serial ordering at MA 5.