Developmental differences in the use of recognition memory rejection mechanisms

The current experiment examined the use of plausibility judgments by children to reject distractors presented on yes/no recognition memory tests. Participants studied two lists of word pairs that shared either a categorical or rhyme association, which constituted the global nature of the two study conditions. During the recognition memory tests, participants were presented with distractors that were either consistent or inconsistent with the global nature of the study environment. Five-year-old children did not engage in plausibility-based rejections in either the rhyme or category condition, whereas children 7 years of age and older engaged in plausibility-based rejections in the rhyme condition. However, it was not until children were 12 years old that they engaged in plausibility-based rejections in the category condition. Such data demonstrate global gist to be necessary but insufficient for children to reject recognition test items on the basis of their plausibility.