Part-list cuing effects in children: A developmental dissociation between the detrimental and beneficial effect

Providing a subset of previously studied items as a retrieval cue can both impair and improve recall of the remaining items. Here, we investigated the development of these two opposing effects of such part-list cuing in children. Using listwise directed forgetting to manipulate study context access, three child age groups (7-8, 9-11, and 13-14years) and young adults studied a list of items and, after study, were asked to either forget or continue remembering the list. After presentation of a second list, participants were tested on predefined target items from the original list in either the presence or absence of the list's remaining (nontarget) items serving as retrieval cues. Results revealed that part-list cuing impaired recall of to-be-remembered target items regardless of age. In contrast, part-list cuing improved recall of to-be-forgotten target items in the adult and the oldest child groups but not in the two younger child groups. This finding suggests a developmental dissociation between the two opposing effects of part-list cuing, indicating that the beneficial effect develops later than the detrimental effect. In particular, following the view that the beneficial effect of part-list cuing arises from reactivation of the study context, the results suggest that elementary school children have difficulty in capitalizing on context reactivation.