Metamemory and the transfer of an interrogative strategy by EMR children

EMR children were taught to produce an interrogative strategy as an aid to paired-associate learning. Interrogative training was spread over four sessions with experimenter guidance gradually faded; training was followed by tests of long-term retention for the trained items, strategy maintenance, and generalization. Metamemory was assessed prior to training and following generalization. Analysis of recall demonstrated successful maintenance and generalization of the interrogative strategy; the quality of elaborations produced by the trained children predicted recall accuracy. Importantly, metamemory pretest measures for the interrogative trained children were related to strategy use at generalization. Metamemory posttest reliably predicted recall during training, maintenance, and generalization sessions and strategy use at maintenance. Interrogative training did not noticeably improve general aspects of metamemorial knowledge.     

The development of young children's memory strategies: First findings from the Würzburg Longitudinal Memory Study

This article reports the first findings of the Würzburg Longitudinal Memory Study, which focuses on children's verbal memory development, particularly the acquisition of memory strategies. At the beginning of the study, 100 kindergarten children (mean age 6 1/2 years) were tested on various memory measures, including sort-recall, text recall, short-term memory capacity, and metamemory. Assessments were repeated twice, with adjacent measurement points separated by 6-month time intervals. One major goal of the initial phase of the study concerned the exploration of the utilization deficiency phenomenon, which refers to the fact that young children who spontaneously use a memory strategy for the first time do not experience immediate memory benefits. Results obtained for the sort-recall task showed that, among those children who acquired a sorting strategy between Times 1 and 2, only a small proportion experienced the utilization deficiency problem. Additional analyses demonstrated that these few children also performed more poorly on the short-term memory tasks and the text recall measure when compared with the groups of efficient strategy users, suggesting that utilization deficiency is accompanied by a more general memory capacity problem. Overall, the findings revealed enormous variability in the early acquisition of memory strategies, indicating that the utilization deficiency phenomenon might not be as frequent as is assumed in the relevant literature.     

问题解决中策略的变化：一项微观发生研究

以30名小学三年级儿童为被试,以一种特殊的方程问题为材料,采用微观发生法,先后进行了5次测查,收集了解题后的口语报告资料,从策略变化的路线、速率、广度、来源以及变化模式的多样性等方面详细探讨了问题解决策略的变化过程。结果发现,在面临新的问题时,被试缺乏相应知识和专门的解题策略,这时以使用多种常规策略以及错误策略为主;此后,当被试建构起对问题的正确表征时,就以使用正确策略为主,甚至发现了非常有技巧性和领域专门性的快捷策略,这时策略的数量明显减少;在面临难度较大的迁移题目时,快捷策略的使用率又降低,而更多借助于常规策略。可见,策略的获得是一个由错误到正确、由多种尝试到选择其一、由一般到专门的演化过程,这主要是一个学生自主建构的过程,当然也受到正式和非正式教育提供的知识的影响。值得说明的是,快捷策略的获得受到问题呈现模式的影响。总是呈现相同题目的单一模式有助于快捷策略的发现,而在混合训练中,插入不同性质的题目会干扰快捷策略的发现;但是,当面临迁移问题时,单一训练相比于混合训练的优势会消失。此外,正确使用常规策略是发现快捷策略的前提。     

儿童在归纳推理中的多样性效应

3个实验探讨了儿童在归纳推理中是否具有多样性效应的争议。实验1采用寻找证据法,使用图片材料,得出5岁儿童在归纳推理中没有多样性效应,表现为典型性效应。实验2改用归属法发现:5岁儿童在归纳推理中表现出多样性效应。实验3采用寻找证据法,但使用实物材料,并且加大了多样性前提的差异程度,结果发现:3岁儿童在归纳推理中也表现出多样性效应。本研究结果表明,在适合的条件下,儿童在归纳推理中能表现出多样性效应。     

Age-related differences in clustering: A new approach

The present study attempted to determine why children under 8 years of age show categorical clustering in free recall above chance expectations, but such organization does not correlate with recall. Six-year-old children and adults were tested for their memory for 24 pictures of categorizable items. Several new measures of organization such as the proportion of items recalled in category strings and number of strings of each length were evaluated. It was found that children's output is characterized by strings of only two intracategory items and many isolates which does not contribute to recall. Adults produced longer strings from more categories which enhanced recall. In addition, different characteristics of output organization predicted recall for adults and children.     

Children's Use of Mnemonic Strategies: Variability in Response to Metamemory Training

In this study, 8- to 12-year-old children were tested to determine their level of use of a strategy for organizing lists of low-associated words into semantic groups. Then, on the basis of their scores in the strategy tests, the children were placed in either a strategic or nonstrategic group. The groups were divided into a sort-instruction training condition, in which they were told to group words so that they “go together” in some way, and a metamemory training condition, in which these instructions were supplemented by feedback, strategy reminders, and opportunities to self-test. One week later, each child's strategy use was reassessed. Children in the strategic group sorted semantically throughout training and transfer, and they showed high recall, regardless of condition. Children in the nonstrategic group showed high strategy use and recall during training, but they showed significantly more variability in recall than did the children in the strategic group. Children in the nonstrategicmetamemory condition who benefited from training were also more likely to transfer the use of the strategy than were children trained in the sort-instruction condition.     

Who uses more strategies? Linking mathematics anxiety to adults’ strategy variability and performance on fraction magnitude tasks

Adults use a variety of strategies to reason about fraction magnitudes, and this variability is adaptive. In two studies, we examined the relationships between mathematics anxiety, working memory, strategy variability and performance on two fraction tasks: fraction magnitude comparison and estimation. Adults with higher mathematics anxiety had lower accuracy on the comparison task and greater percentage absolute error (PAE) on the estimation task. Unexpectedly, mathematics anxiety was not related to variable strategy use. However, variable strategy use was linked to more accurate magnitude comparisons, especially among adults with lower working memory performance or those who use mathematics less frequently, as well as lower PAE on the estimation task. These findings shed light on the role of strategy variability in fraction problem solving and demonstrate a link between mathematics anxiety and fraction magnitude reasoning, a key predictor of general mathematics achievement.     

Developmental differences in the mental effort requirements for the use of an organizational strategy in free recall

The mental effort requirements of free recall and the use of an organization strategy for recall were investigated in two experiments. Interference on a secondary task (finger tapping) was assessed to measure the mental effort requirements of the memory tasks. In a first experiment, it was found that comparable expenditure of mental effort resulted in better memory performance for adults and seventh-graders compared with third-graders, and for related lists compared with unrelated lists. In a second experiment, third- and seventh-graders were instructed to use an organizational strategy to remember a list of words. Although both third- and seventh-graders employed the organizational strategy and showed comparable expenditure of mental effort, this led to increased levels of performance only for the seventh-graders. The results suggest that when memory strategies are imposed on young children, what mental effort is expended on implementing the mnemonic reduces the amount of mental capacity available for other activities, resulting in only modest gains in memory performance.     

Developmental and intellectual differences in self-report and strategy use.

The veridicality and reactivity of children's self-report of covert and overt memory strategies were investigated in a task allowing a direct comparison of self-report and the strategy observed. External memory strategies (e.g., moving objects) were investigated with 7-, 9-, 11-, and 17-year-old typical children and 11- and 17-year-old children with mild mental retardation. Participants placed objects in specified spatial locations after hearing sequences of tape-recorded sentences. After each trial, half of the children immediately reported the strategy used. There were strong positive correlations between the frequency of reported strategy use and observed strategy use. Self-reports were accurate but not always complete. There was no effect of the self-reporting procedure on measures of verbal strategies, external memory strategies, and accuracy of recall. Children were less likely to report strategies not related to recall; these results are compatible with a "goal-sketch" mechanism.     

Associative and categorical processes in children's memory: The role of automaticity in the development of organization in free recall

Free recall performance was assessed in children in Grades 3, 5, 7, and 9 (Experiment 1) and adults (Experiment 2) on a list of categorically related words constructed so that some items within a category were highly associated with one another and interitem associations were low among other items (e.g., dog, cat, cow, lion, tiger). Associative relations were used frequently in recall by subjects of all ages, with analyses of interitem latencies and correlations between recall and clustering indicating that organization in recall was based only on associative relations for the third and fifth graders but based on both associative and nonassociative categorical relations for older subjects. Examination of the placement of high associates in recall indicated that seventh- and ninth-grade children were more apt to use associative relations to begin category clusters than were younger children or adults. These children were hypothesized to use the relatively automatic activation of associative relations to instigate categorical organization and to represent a stage in development between nonstrategic younger children and strategic adults. The results were discussed in terms of the role that the automatic activation of semantic memory relations may play in the development of strategic memory organization.     

The irrelevant sound effect in short-term memory: Is there developmental change?

With two experiments, effects of irrelevant speech and classroom noise on serial recall of common nouns presented pictorially were investigated in children and adults. Experiment 1 used fixed list lengths for children (first graders) and adults. Experiment 2 used list lengths adjusted to participants' (second–third graders, adults) individual spans. In both experiments, children and adults were equally impaired by irrelevant speech. This contrasts with a related study (differences in methodology) by Elliott (2002), who reported severe increase in the detrimental impact of irrelevant speech with decreasing age. In both experiments, classroom noise had no effect in overall analyses. For Experiment 1, however, separate group analyses revealed impairment in children. Results suggest that effects of irrelevant sounds on serial recall stem from two separate mechanisms: Specific interference due to the sounds' automatic access to short-term memory, and/or attention capture. Only for the latter there is developmental change.     

Effects of target set sizeon feelings of knowing and cued recall: Implications for the cue effectiveness andpartial-retrieval hypotheses

Target set size refers to the number of preexisting connections a studied word has to closely related concepts in long-term memory. The purpose of this investigation was to determine whether target set size influences feeling-of-knowing (FOK) ratings. The results showed that ratings were higher for targets connected to smaller sets, as compared with those connected to larger sets. Comparable effects were obtained with the use of different encoding strategies, including concreteness classifications and vowel naming, and with both meaningfully and phonologically related test cues. These findings indicate that FOKsare sensitive to competition between concepts linked to the target and that this sensitivity is independent of encoding strategy and type of test cue. Response time measures indicated that FOKs are sensitive to competition that arises when concepts are activated in parallel, whereas recall is more sensitive to competition that arises during sampling associated with search. Implications for various cue-based and target-based explanations of FOK effects are discussed.     

Word-list-learning performance in younger and older adults: intra-individual performance variability and false memory

We investigated the word-list-learning performance of younger and older adults over 4 consecutive days at different times of day to study age-related differences in consistency of performance over time and the influence of circadian variation on performance. Eighteen younger (M age, 23.4 years) and 18 older (M age, 73.3 years) men and women participated. The start time of testing alternated between morning and early evening across the 4 days of testing. On each test day, participants learned a different list of 15 unrelated words over four learning trials. As expected, younger adults performed better than older adults on immediate recall, delayed recall, and recognition. Contrary to our expectations, time of day did not significantly influence recall or recognition performance in either the older or younger adults. Older adults did show a greater incidence of false memory (i.e., previously learned list intrusions in free recall and false alarms in recognition) than younger adults. Older adults also exhibited greater intra-individual performance variability on the measures of false memory across test days. This variability was not related to circadian variation. False memory and variability of performance have both been linked to frontal systems dysfunction. The findings presented here are consistent with the notion that changes in cognition with aging in part reflect age-related decline in frontal lobe function.     

Offline consolidation supersedes prior knowledge benefits in children's (but not adults’) word learning

Prior linguistic knowledge is proposed to support the acquisition and consolidation of new words. Adults typically have larger vocabularies to support word learning than children, but the developing brain shows enhanced neural processes that are associated with offline memory consolidation. This study investigated contributions of prior knowledge to initial word acquisition and consolidation at different points in development, by teaching children and adults novel words (e.g., ballow) that varied in the number of English word‐form “neighbours” (e.g., wallow, bellow). Memory for the novel word‐forms was tested immediately after training, the next day and 1 week later, to assess the time‐course of prior knowledge contributions. Children aged 7–9 years (Experiments 1, 3) and adults (Experiment 2) recalled words with neighbours better than words without neighbours when tested immediately after training. However, a period of offline consolidation improved overall recall and reduced the influence of word‐form neighbours on longer term memory. These offline consolidation benefits were larger in children than adults, supporting theories that children have a greater propensity for consolidating phonologically distinctive language information. Local knowledge of just a single word‐form neighbour was enough to enhance learning, and this led to the individual differences in word recall that were related to adults’ global vocabulary ability. The results support the proposal that the relative contributions of different learning mechanisms change across the lifespan, and highlight the importance of testing theoretical models of word learning in the context of development.     

Using dynamic walking models to identify factors that contribute to increased risk of falling in older adults

Falls are common in older adults. The most common cause of falls is tripping while walking. Simulation studies demonstrated that older adults may be restricted by lower limb strength and movement speed to regain balance after a trip. This review examines how modeling approaches can be used to determine how different measures predict actual fall risk and what some of the causal mechanisms of fall risk are. Although increased gait variability predicts increased fall risk experimentally, it is not clear which variability measures could best be used, or what magnitude of change corresponded with increased fall risk. With a simulation study we showed that the increase in fall risk with a certain increase in gait variability was greatly influenced by the initial level of variability. Gait variability can therefore not easily be used to predict fall risk. We therefore explored other measures that may be related to fall risk and investigated the relationship between stability measures such as Floquet multipliers and local divergence exponents and actual fall risk in a dynamic walking model. We demonstrated that short-term local divergence exponents were a good early predictor for fall risk. Neuronal noise increases with age. It has however not been fully understood if increased neuronal noise would cause an increased fall risk. With our dynamic walking model we showed that increased neuronal noise caused increased fall risk. Although people who are at increased risk of falling reduce their walking speed it had been questioned whether this slower speed would actually cause a reduced fall risk. With our model we demonstrated that a reduced walking speed caused a reduction in fall risk. This may be due to the decreased kinematic variability as a result of the reduced signal-dependent noise of the smaller muscle forces that are required for slower. These insights may be used in the development of fall prevention programs in order to better identify those at increased risk of falling and to target those factors that influence fall risk most.     

Factors affecting developmental changes in the speed of processing

Although many studies have found developmental changes in the speed of various processes, they have potentially confounded the subject's age with his knowledge of the task domain and use of strategies. In this study, the strategies used by the subject and his domain knowledge were independently assessed by a number of tasks. Subsequently, processing rate measures were obtained for a task (the “same/different” judgment task of simultaneously presented stimuli) in which domain knowledge was manipulated independently of age while controlling for strategy usage. It was found that the usual adult superiority in speed of processing could be markedly reduced if children possessed equivalent amounts of domain knowledge and this effect was domain specific. Further, it was found that differences in knowledge affected processing rates in both knowledgeable adults and children and to about the same extent. It was concluded that some part of the typical adult superiority in processing rate was due to knowledge differences.     

Short-term memory predictions across the lifespan: monitoring span before and after conducting a task

Our objective was to explore metamemory in short-term memory across the lifespan. Five age groups participated in this study: 3 groups of children (4–13 years old), and younger and older adults. We used a three-phase task: prediction–span–postdiction. For prediction and postdiction phases, participants reported with a Yes/No response if they could recall in order a series of images. For the span task, they had to actually recall such series. From 4 years old, children have some ability to monitor their short-term memory and are able to adjust their prediction after experiencing the task. However, accuracy still improves significantly until adolescence. Although the older adults had a lower span, they were as accurate as young adults in their evaluation, suggesting that metamemory is unimpaired for short-term memory tasks in older adults.

Highlights:

?We investigate metamemory for short-term memory tasks across the lifespan.

?We find younger children cannot accurately predict their span length.

?Older adults are accurate in predicting their span length.

?People’s metamemory accuracy was related to their short-term memory span.     

The development of memory efficiency and value-directed remembering across the life span: a cross-sectional study of memory and selectivity

Although attentional control and memory change considerably across the life span, no research has examined how the ability to strategically remember important information (i.e., value-directed remembering) changes from childhood to old age. The present study examined this in different age groups across the life span (N = 320, 5-96 years old). A selectivity task was used in which participants were asked to study and recall items worth different point values in order to maximize their point score. This procedure allowed for measures of memory quantity/capacity (number of words recalled) and memory efficiency/selectivity (the recall of high-value items relative to low-value items). Age-related differences were found for memory capacity, as young adults recalled more words than the other groups. However, in terms of selectivity, younger and older adults were more selective than adolescents and children. The dissociation between these measures across the life span illustrates important age-related differences in terms of memory capacity and the ability to selectively remember high-value information.     

Age differences in veridical and false recall are not inevitable: The role of frontal lobe function

The relationship of neuropsychological measures of frontal lobe function to age differences in false recall was assessed using the Deese/Roediger-McDermott associative false memory paradigm (Deese, 1959; Roediger & McDermott, 1995). As other studies have found, older adults were less likely to correctly recall studied items and more likely to falsely recall highly related but nonpresented items than were younger adults. When older adults were divided based on a composite measure of frontal lobe functioning, this age difference was found only for low frontal lobe functioning individuals. High frontal lobe functioning older adults and young adults had equivalent levels of false recall, as well as equivalent levels of veridical recall. These results suggest that age differences in memory may be due to declines in frontal lobe function. More important, our findings indicate that declines in veridical recall and increases in false recall are not an inevitable consequence of aging.     

Children's recall strategies in dichotic listening

Normal adults spontaneously adopt different recall strategies in reporting dichotic material presented at different rates. A channel by channel or ear order is used with the faster rate of input and a pair by pair or temporal order is used with the slower rate of input. The purpose of the present report is to study the frequency of the different orders of report in children as a function of the rate of input of dichotic stimulation. Twenty-four normal children, 9–10 years of age, were given the dichotic listening task under three rate conditions. The children used different recall strategies as a function of rate of input in the same manner as that reported for adults. In addition, the order of presentation of the different rates of input was found to influence the relative frequency of the different recall strategies. A significant positive correlation was found between intelligence and the frequency of use of only the temporal recall strategy in its appropriate (slow) rate condition.