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.