Developmental and individual differences in young children's use and maintenance of a selective memory strategy

Children who were 4 to 8 years of age were asked to perform a sort-recall task where only half of the items had to be studied and remembered. Following a baseline trial, children were assigned to 1 of 3 groups and were prompted to use either a sorting or a clustering strategy (experimental groups) or were not prompted at all (control group). Children were seen 2 weeks later and given a new set of items for the transfer-of-training sort-recall phases. Levels of recall and strategy use (sorting, clustering, multiple strategy use) were higher for older children, typical items, sorting prompts, and trials with repeated presentations of test materials. Older children used more strategies than younger children, although even 4-year-olds used more than one strategy when performing the memory tasks. Results of multivariate cluster analyses revealed systematic individual differences, separating low performers from production-deficient children and high performers. Overall, findings show that clustering appears to be an early developing, but less effective strategy, with multiple-strategy use and especially sorting being used more frequently and effectively by older children.