Successive Cognitive Processes in the Alphabetic Recall of Labelled Pictures

Summary

The choice and effectiveness of successive processes in recall were studied with the use of an alphabetic-positional mnemonic. Ss were 103 boys and girls in grades three, five, and seven. The memory stimulus was a set of 26 labelled pictures, each corresponding to a letter of the alphabet in a 2 (alphabetic-random vs. alphabetic-positional) × 2 (prior vs. postcueing) factor combination. As hypothesized, both grade and position facilitated recall significantly (p < .05). In contrast to hypotheses, neither cueing nor the grade by position interaction was significant. Results were discussed in terms of the possible usefulness of the alphabetic technique in future developmental memory research.