Related Experiment Video
Updated: Aug 19, 2026

Examining Recall Memory in Infancy and Early Childhood Using the Elicited Imitation Paradigm
Published on: April 28, 2016
The spacing effect in young children's free recall: support for automatic-process explanations
1Department of Psychology, Villanova University, PA 19085.
Abstract:
The effect of spacing repetitions on children's free recall was investigated in two experiments. In Experiment 1, both 4-year-old children and 7-year-old children exhibited a spacing effect in free recall, and the magnitude of the effect did not change with age. In Experiment 2, free recall was examined as a function of spacing, age (3 years old vs. 4 years old) and presentation rate (1 vs. 2 vs. 5 sec per stimulus). A spacing effect was obtained that did not differ as a function of age or presentation rate. Of particular interest was the fact that 3-year-olds exhibited a strong spacing effect even when stimuli were presented at a very rapid 1-sec rate. The results support the hypothesis that fundamental memory mechanisms that operate relatively automatically are sufficient to produce a spacing effect in free recall.
More Related Videos
Related Concept Videos
The Anchoring-and-Adjustment Heuristic
Implicit Memories
One key aspect of implicit...
Eyewitness Memory
One such error is memory distortion, which occurs because human memory does not function like a...
Interference and Decay
Interference occurs when competing memories hinder the retrieval of particular information. It can be classified into two types: proactive and retroactive interference. Proactive...
Impact of Schemas
Automatic Processing and Automatic Social Behavior

