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Imagery, encoding specificity, and prose recall in 6-year-old children
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology
|December 1, 1985
Summary
Partial pictures improve young children's memory recall for text. However, specific instructions or training on generating mental images do not further enhance this effect, contrary to prior hypotheses.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Developmental Psychology
- Educational Psychology
Background:
- Partial pictures, which show only parts of text, are hypothesized to improve memory in children.
- This improvement is thought to occur by encouraging children to create mental images for the unpictured parts of the text.
- Previous research suggested children might have difficulty retrieving these self-generated images.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the effect of partial pictures on children's prose recall.
- To determine if partial pictures aid encoding or retrieval processes.
- To examine the impact of imagery instructions and training on retention.
Main Methods:
- Two hundred eighty-eight 6-year-old children participated in the study.
- Children were presented with prose passages accompanied by partial pictures.
- Recall was tested using identical prompts for both study and retrieval phases.
- Imagery instructions and training were varied across conditions.
Main Results:
- Partial pictures significantly facilitated recall when presented during the study phase.
- Using identical prompts for studying and retrieval also enhanced recall.
- Imagery instructions and training did not yield a significant effect on retention.
Conclusions:
- Partial pictures appear to enhance information encoding efficiency during study.
- There is no evidence that young children spontaneously generate imagery from partial picture cues.
- The study does not support the idea of a retrieval deficit for self-generated images in this age group.