A developmental comparison of the effectiveness of encoding tasks

In Experiment 1, the free-recall performance of young children, college students, and older adults was examined. Subjects encoded words by simply learning them, by studying them in either base or elaborate sentence frames, or by constructing sentences. Overall recall was better for the college students than for the children or for the older adults, and the college students recalled best in the simple learning condition. The young children recalled best in the sentence construction condition; recall by older adults did not vary as a function of the encoding tasks. In Experiment 2, college students and older adults recalled a categorized list, encoding the words by simply learning them, by studying them in elaborate sentence frames, or by completing word fragments. For both age groups, simple learning produced the highest level of recall. These results suggest that organization provides the most effective encoding system and that older adults may need a more obvious basis for organization than do younger adults. Younger and older adults recalled equally well only when organization was discouraged by conceptual processing.