Children's memory for goal‐directed events

Abstract

This study is concerned with children's representation of goal‐directed action sequences. Its aim was to investigate the role of plan schemata in guiding the coding of both of visually and verbally presented action sequences. In particular, it tested the amodality hypothesis proposed by Lichtenstein and Brewer (1980). A preliminary experiment studied children's representation of two structurally different action sequences: An additive plan and a hierarchical plan. In the main experiment the two action sequences were presented via a text or a film to first, third, and fifth graders, who later recalled them. The results partially agree with the amodality hypothesis: Mode of presentation did not affect the recall of most important actions. However, an interaction between type of plan and mode of presentation was registered: Less important actions of the hierarchical plan are recalled better when presented verbally. A syntactic‐semantic analysis of the recalls confirmed the facilitating effect of verbal presentation: Children presented with the verbal input produced linguistically more complex reports than children presented with the film.