Induced versus spontaneous rehearsal in short-term memory in nursery school children.

Abstract

2 Four groups of nursery school Ss were given a serial short-term memory task in which difficult-to-label stimuli were used. Three experimental groups were provided labels for the stimuli. Of these, one group overtly pronounced the labels and rehearsed them during the task, one group merely pronounced the labels overtly, and one g%oup was instructed to say the labels cavertly. A control group received no labels for the stimuli. Rehearsal of the labels was found to facilitate recall performance on early serial itemspand overt labeling facilitated recall on the last serial item. Covert labeling did not facilitate recall. The results supported the hypothesis that qualitatively different processing strategies determine primacy and recency effects. Current theories of the role of verbalizing in children's memory performance are discussed.