What can we learn about immediate memory from the development of children's free recall?

Abstract

We ask the question: Which aspects of immediate memory performance improve with age? In two studies, we reexamine the widely held view that primary memory capacity estimates derived from children's immediate free recall are age invariant. This was done by assessing children's immediate free-recall accuracy while also measuring the order in which they elected to recall items (Experiment 1) and by encouraging children to begin free recall with items from towards the end of the presented list (Experiment 2). Across samples aged between 5 and 8 years we replicated the previously reported age-related changes in free-recall serial position functions when aggregated across all trials of the standard task, including an absence of age differences in the recency portion of this curve. However, we also show that this does not reflect the fact that primary memory capacity is constant across age. Instead, when we incorporate order of report information, clear age differences are evident in the recall of list-final items that are output at the start of a participant's response. In addition, the total amount that individuals recalled varied little across different types of free-recall tasks. These findings have clear implications for the use of immediate free recall as a means of providing potential indices of primary memory capacity and in the study of the development of immediate memory.

Keywords:

• Primary memory
• Free recall
• Immediate memory development

We are grateful to the staff and pupils of Air Balloon Primary School Bristol, Ashton Gate Primary School Bristol, Ashley Down Primary School Bristol, and Cheddar Grove Primary School Bristol for their help and cooperation.

Notes

¹Farrell (2012) has proposed an account of free recall that, potentially, provides something of a reconciliation of these views. Although essentially a unitary account, based on the common hierarchical structuring of memory into discrete episodic clusters (see General Discussion for a more thorough treatment), Farrell's (2012) model assumes that individuals can recall just-presented information from the currently open episodic cluster without the need to first access it. This account therefore shares features with models that assume that just-presented items have greater accessibility than all other material by virtue of being active in some form of focus of attention (e.g., Cowan, 2001; Jonides et al., 2008; McElree, 2006; see also Nee & Jonides, 2011; Öztekin, Davachi, & McElree, 2010).

²A potentially alternative explanation of the relative peak in the probability of first recall function at list position 7 is that participants might be grouping the nine-item list into three subgroups each of three items. One slight problem for this view is that there is no evidence in Figure 2 of any increase in probability of first recall for item 4, which would be the first item in the middle group under such a strategy. In addition, grouping the list in threes might simply be the consequence of participants having a primary memory capacity of about three items that allows them to recall from position 7 with relatively good accuracy (cf. Farrell, 2012).

³Given these estimates, one might question why Year 1 individuals did not show perfect recall in the 7–2 condition of the task (cf. Figure 7). However, Year 1 children's recall of the final list item on these trials, when their recall commenced with the 8th item on the list, was high, and any erroneous recall of this final item might be a reflection of the uncertainty about the type of list about to be presented on any trial. As the three different conditions were interleaved with one another, participants had no knowledge of the type of trial that was about to be presented. They might therefore have adopted an encoding strategy that maximized their chances of recalling any of the last four items on the list (rather than just the last two).

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by grants from the United Kingdom's Economic and Social Research Council to Chris Jarrold and Alan Baddeley [grant number RES-062-23-0148] and to Chris Jarrold and John Towse [grant number RES-062-23-2467].