Developmental differences in the mental effort requirements for the use of an organizational strategy in free recall |
| |
| Affiliation: | 1. University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine, Department of Pediatrics/Rady Children''s Hospital San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA;2. Department of Cellular & Molecular Medicine, Stem Cell Program, MC 0695, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA;3. University of California, San Diego, Department of Anthropology, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA;4. Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny (CARTA), University of California, San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA;5. Neuroscience Graduate Program, University of California, San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA;1. Molecular Psychopharmacology Laboratory, The Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health, Parkville, Victoria, Australia;2. NeuRA, Schizophrenia Research Institute, Randwick, New South Wales, Australia;3. School of Psychiatry, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia;4. Neuroscience Research Australia, Randwick, New South Wales, Australia;6. Department of Psychiatry, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria, Australia;1. University of Copenhagen, Department of English, Germanic and Romance Studies, Emil, Holms Kanal 6, 2300 Copenhagen, Denmark;2. Georgia State University, USA |
| |
| Abstract: | 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. |
| |
| Keywords: | |
| 本文献已被 ScienceDirect 等数据库收录！ |
|
