Examined whether representational changes in digit memory are functions of children's expertise in mental abacus operation when abacus operators reproduced series of digits forward or backward. Found skilled operators equally facile with forward and backward reproduction, but novices slower going backward. Suggests advanced operators apply their…

Concludes that strategies are not responsible for memory span development in children 7 through 13 years old. Running and fixed memory span tasks and a running probe task were administered to 38 children. The probe task showed age differences as great as with the fixed span task. Span was reduced by approximately half an item over all ages.…

Examines common assumptions about children's memory and discusses their implications for legal practice. Asserts that, while research has shown that children recall less than adults, there is little evidence for other deficits in children's memory. Describes research suggesting that children may have difficulty with some, but not all,…

Developmental changes in memory organization based on synonym and antonym relationships were examined in three experiments. Subjects were 64 second graders and 64 sixth graders. Some inadequacies of a false recognition paradigm for developmental research are identified and some alternative analyses are proposed. (Author/JH)

Children, ages 7-8 and 11-12, were asked to represent pairs of nouns in memory as a single interactive image, as two separate images, or by a control procedure; and then were tested either by cued or noncued recall. Results were interpreted as supporting an imagery-organization hypothesis. (Author/SB)

The present study was designed to explore what subjects can and will do spontaneously in memory retrieval situations. Subjects were kindergarten, third grade and college students. (SB)

A conceptualization of intentional behavior is presented stressing the problem of diagnosis. Methodological requirements for the study of intentional memory development are used in a selective review of the literature. (MS)

Tested predictions of dynamic field theory in study of 3-year-olds' location memory errors in task with homogeneous task space. Found that young children's spatial memory responses are affected by delay- and experience-dependent processes as well as the geometric structure of the task space. Both dynamic field theory and category adjustment models…

Two experiments examined effects of event modality on young children's memory and suggestibility. Findings indicated that 5-year-olds were more accurate than 3-year-olds and those participating in the event were more accurate than those either observing or listening to a narrative. Assessment method, level of event learning, delay to testing, and…

Two experiments involving students from grades 1-2 and 5-6 found strong connections between development and forgetting rates when the influences of learning ability were eliminated. Findings eliminated a hypothesis based on age variability in overlearning. (RH)

Cognitive triage is the nonmonotonic relationship between the order in which children read words out of long-term memory and the strength of the memory of the words read. Two experiments with 7 and 12 year olds compared the fuzzy-trace theory with an effortful processing explanation. Findings consistently favored the fuzzy-trace theory's…

To examine the role of cognitive skill and racial stereotyping in Euro-American children's processing of race-related information, 75 Euro-American children, aged 4 to 9 years, were asked to recall test stories that were either consistent or inconsistent with cultural racial stereotypes. As predicted, lower degrees of racial stereotyping were…

Two studies demonstrated that infants use referential cues to guide new word-object mapping as early as 19 to 20 months of age and that they understood that actions accompanying such labeling were not necessarily referential. These findings indicate that language learning is grounded in a relatively rich understanding of cues to reference, at…

Examined effects of participation in an event on four and seven year olds' reports of the event. Results showed that participation lowered susceptibility to suggestion. Older children were less suggestible about actions that took place. Children showed high resistance to suggestions about actions that might be associated with abuse. (SH)

Notes that fuzzy-trace theory has been used to understand false memories of children. Demonstrates the irony imbedded in the theory, maintaining that a central implication of fuzzy-trace theory is that some errors characterized as false memories are not really false at all. These errors, when applied to false alarms to related lures, are best…