The Effect of Unconstrained Study Time on Free Recall in Children and Adults

Abstract

Automatic associative organization in children's recall was expected to be reflected in the independence of study time, clustering, and number of items remembered. Thirty-six kindergartners and 36 adults performed a free-recall task using categorizable picture cards. Adults used more study time and recalled and clustered more than children did. Similar structural features of adult recall correlated with study time, clustering, and total output, but no relationship was found between children's study time and performance. Children approached the task nonsystematically, and their memory processing proceeded in an automatic manner so that clustering of pairwise associations appeared without application of a strategy.