Developmental Differences in Children's Spontaneous Allocation of Study Time

Abstract

Developmental differences in two components of allocation of study time were examined: (1) the ability to allocate more time to more difficult material (i.e., differential allocation), and (b) the ability to allocate sufficient time to meet the recall goal (i.e., sufficient allocation). Children in first, third, and fifth grade were asked to study paired-associate items until they were sure they could recall all the pairs perfectly. The study list consisted of highly related pairs of objects (e.g., bat-ball) and unrelated pairs of objects (e.g., frog-book), classified as easy and hard pairs, respectively. Although first- and third-grade children spent approximately the same amount of study time on hard pairs as they spent on easy pairs, fifth-grade children spontaneously allocated significantly more time to the hard pairs than to the easy pairs. The recall scores for the hard items were far below the criterion, suggesting that children at all ages did not spend a sufficient amount of study time to meet the recall goal.