On the Meaning of Time in Later Life

Fourth-, sixth-, and eighth-grade subjects participated in a free-recall experiment to test the relative power of two Taxonomic, two Semantic Differential, and two Sense Impression word classes in facilitating recall. Findings show that across all grades children exhibited a significantly greater tendency to recall and cluster Taxonomic and Semantic Differential over Sense Impression word classes. Further, sixth and eighth graders recalled more words over all word classes than fourth graders. It was also found that girls recalled more words than boys across all three grade levels and all six word classes. Finally, there was no grade or sex effect for clustering. An interpretation of this difference was offered