Semantic and contextual cuing of preschool children's recall

Abstract

3 experiments were carried out to investigate cuing of young children's recall. In each experiment younger (3 years) and older (4 1/2 years) preschool children were tested on free and cued recall tasks in which the presence of semantic and contextual cues was manipulated. In the first 2 experiments there was little evidence that the children's recall was facilitated by presence of contextual cues, independent of the facilitation produced by semantic information. In the third experiment, context and target items were integrated experimentally at presentation. In this case, unrelated context cues improved recall. This finding suggests that limitations in the facilitatory effects of context cues for preschool children are related to the ways these young children initially encode target and context items. In all 3 experiments semantic cues aided both younger and older children's recall. Moreover, there was evidence of a developmental increase in the effectiveness of semantic, but not contextual, cues. This finding highlights the importance of growth of the semantic knowledge base for early memory development.