A clarification of frequency effects in children’s discrimination learning

Memory & Cognition - Three experiments were conducted to assess the effects of certain stimulus variables on children’s discrimination learning. In general, it was found that word...     

Orienting versus learning instructions in children's free recall: New evidence

Ninety-six first graders were given a list of either words or pictures to process under three types of incidental orienting instructions (semantic, directed at list organization; semantic, directed at individual item characteristics; and physical) and an intentional-learning instruction. For pictures and words, list organizational instructions were the most effective, and were superior to intentional-learning instructions. In contrast, individual item-orienting instructions were not better than intentional-learning instructions on either list. Additionally, different patterns of instructional effects emerged on the two list types, which were interpreted with respect to both available data and contemporary processing theories.     

Additional evidence from a paradigm for inferring discriminative processes in children and adults

A previously developed paradigm which incorporates a correlational methodology into an experimental context was used in the present study to specify more definitely the attribute(s) underlying verbal discrimination learning under normal conditions. In the case of fifth- and sixth-grade children, it was found that frequency theory is sufficient to account for performance on the task. However, older subjects were less homogeneously reliant on the frequency attribute. While many older subjects appeared to utilize frequency cues, others adopted strategies that resulted in the utilization of attributes other than frequency.     

The effects of strategy—Monitoring training on children's selection of effective memory strategies

Second grade children were given training in general principles of strategy monitoring prior to being exposed to differentially effective acquisition strategies in a memory task. The results showed that even though both experimental and placebo control groups could assess when they remembered better, more experimental than control children attributed performance differences to their strategic behavior and then selected the more effective strategy on a forced-choice trial. These findings indicate that instruction in general memory-monitoring principles is sufficient to effect a change in strategy usage. The study therefore provides direct experimental support for the presumed relationship between metacognitive knowledge and subsequent strategy use.     

Developmental differences in frequency judgments of words and pictures

Children in kindergarten, third, and fifth grades were presented a list of either pictures or words (with items presented for varying numbers of times on the study trial). In both picture and word conditions, half of the Ss estimated how many times each item had been presented (absolute judgments) and the other half judged which of two items had occurred more often on the study trial (relative judgments). The primary finding was that while frequency judgment performance improved with age for both pictures and words, there was relatively greater improvement for pictures (i.e., the picture-word difference increased with age). These results lend strong support to the frequency theory of discrimination learning and, in particular, may be useful in accounting for effects associated with age and with age by stimulus mode interactions.     

Phenomenal background frequency and the concreteness/imagery effect in verbal discrimination learning

College students gave frequency ratings for concrete and abstract words which were equated on normative frequency. The results replicated the finding of Galbraith and Underwood (1973) that abstract words are perceived to be higher in frequency than concrete words. Different subjects then learned verbal discrimination lists consisting of both abstract and concrete pairs. While the usual concreteness effect was obtained when abstract and concrete items differed widely on phenomenal frequency, it disappeared when these items were equated on perceived frequency. The finding that appropriate frequency manipulations can eliminate the concreteness/imagery effect, coupled with similar findings for other stimulus characteristics, lends strong support to the frequency theory of discrimination learning.     

Picture-word differences and conceptual frequency judgments

Recent evidence suggests that while pictures are more easily recognized, discriminated, associated, and recalled than their corresponding verbal labels, this is not the case in concept acquisition/utilization tasks. If such evidence is interpreted in terms of a "frequency theory" perspective, one would expect the typically obtained frequency judgment differences between pictures and words to be reduced if "conceptual" frequency judgments are required. This expectation was confirmed in three experiments.     

Developmental changes in incidental memory as a function of processing level,congruity, and repetition

Second-, fifth-, and ninth-grade students (8, 11, and 14 years of age, respectively) answered acoustic and semantic questions about words which were either congruent or incongruent with the questions. Subsequently, students' free recall of the words was unexpectedly tested. For words presented once in the list, only orienting task and congruity main effects were found. For twice-presented words, grade level interacted with both variables in that older students' recall was better than younger students' only for semantically encoded, congruent words. This finding is consistant with the hypothesis that developmental increases in semantic knowledge enhance the potential for encoding elaboration, but is in apparent conflict with the results of M. F. Geis and D. M. Hall (Child Development, 1978, 49, 857–861) who found no such interaction for second- and fifth-grade children. The different age spans included in the two studies provides one resolution of the discrepancy in results. However, a second experiment tested the importance of a procedural difference between the two studies. M. F. Geis and D. M. Hall (Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 1976, 22, 58–66; 1978) presented the question after the stimulus word while we presented the question before the word. For ninth-grade students, the question after condition resulted in an attenuation of the recall difference between semantic and acoustic questions compared to the question before condition. It was argued that the pattern of developmental differences in incidental memory that is obtained may be related to which procedure is utilized.     

Varieties of frequency interference in children's recognition of sentence information

The memory of fourth-grade children (9 years, 10 months of age) for information contained in target sentences presented 24 hours earlier was tested by multiple-choice recognition items each consisting of a question about a target sentence followed by three response options. The options consisted of the correct word from the sentence, a new word, and an old, incorrect word that was contained in another sentence on the study trial. The results indicated that the amount of interference produced by old information depended upon the relationship between the sentence in which the old information occurred and the target sentence—being the least when the two were unrelated; the most when the two shared the same subject noun (which also occurred in the stem of the test item for the target sentence); and intermediate when the subjects of the two sentences were synonyms. The interference produced by these manipulations was moderated by instructional strategies and the distance between the target sentence and its variation. The experiment establishes the validity of contextual frequency accrual, a construct logically necessary in extending frequency theory to recognition of information contained in sentences.