The Distinction between Perceiving and Memorizing in Elementary School Children

Abstract

YUSSEN, STEVEN R.; GAGN', ELLEN; GARGIULO, RICHARD; and KUNEN, SETH. The Distinction between Perceiving and Memorizing in Elementary School Children. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1974, 45, 547-551. 32 children each at grades 1-5 participated in an experiment designed to replicate and extend a study by Flavell and associates (1972) which hypothesized that memorizing and perceiving are functionally undifferentiated for the young child, with deliberate memorization only gradually emerging as a separate and distinctive form of cognitive encounter with external data. Children at all ages showed this differentiation by studying differently and recalling more items when instructed to remember a list of pictures than when instructed to look at a list. The failure to find age trends in differential responding contradicted findings in the earlier study and was explained in terms of slight differences in experimental procedures.