A DEVELOPMENTAL STUDY CONCERNING REHEARSAL AND ORGANIZATION IN MEMORY
1979 Volume 27 Issue 1 Pages 27-36
Details
1979 Volume 27 Issue 1 Pages 27-36
The purpose of the present study was to investigate the developmental change of the rehearsal and organization effect on immediate and final recall in single trial recall learning.
Subjects were forty-five third graders (Exp. I) and forty-five college students (Exp. II). The Ss learned two lists (Exp. I) or four lists (Exp. II) of 20 items (line drawing of ordinary objects) made in four categories. Study-test method was used. In study trials each item was presented for one second by a slide projecter with four seconds interval in which Overt reheasal groups (O Gr.) were required to rehearse overtly; Covert rehearsal groups (C Gr.) were not given any instruction, and Minimal rehearsal groups (M Gr.) were asked to count numbers. Amount of recall and clustering were assessed in immediate free recall (IFR) and final constrained recall (FCR)
The main results were as follows.
IFR: Regarding the recall data in both age groups. the performance of O Gr. and C Gr. were significantly superior to M Gr. with no differece between the former two. In the amount of recall at recency portion, O Gr. showed higher performance than C Gr. in third graders, but there was no difference between two groups in college students. Regarding the clustering data, O Gr. and C Gr. showed greater amount of clustering than M Gr. in college students but there were no differences among the three groups in third graders. In O Gr. college students utilized more categories than third graders to rehearse items.
FCR: Serial position curves in all groups showed the highest in primacy portion and the lowest in recency portion. In both age groups O Gr. showed superior recall than M Gr. with no difference between former two. With the comparison between IFR and FCR, to instruct category names improved the middle portion recall of third graders but did not recency portion recall of both age groups (negative recency effect).
These results suggested that (1) the rehearsal during study trial enhanced both immediate and final recall,(2) college students engaged in elaborative rehearsal utilizing category names, and third graders did in maintenance rehearsal,(3) as the previous findings with non-category lists, the negative recency effect was observed with category lists.
