Children's awareness of memorability.

Abstract

Do young elementary school children lack the ability to distinguish between easy-and hard-to-remember events? Children in kindergarten and Grades 2, 4, and 6 were shown a mixed categorical-unrelated list of 18 pictures and were asked to predict which items they would be able to recall. Although kindergarteners significantly overpredicted the number of items they would remember, a signal-detection analysis showed that they were as discriminating as older children at predicting which particular items were memorable (although they did seem to use a more liberal response criterion). Justifications for why particular items were memorable showed increasing reference to item and task characteristics with increasing age. Predictions of others' performance showed strikingly different patterns of justifications depending on whether the target individual was younger or older than the subject.

Memory Development Between 2 and 20

“…Whether elementary-school children over-or underestimate performance seems to vary with the memory task. For instance, serial memory span is usually overestimated (e.g., Flavell et al, 1970), whereas recall of categorizable lists is underestimated (e.g., Worden & Sladewski-Awig, 1982). (The latter result is probably not surprising given elementary-school children's Iack of awareness of the effects of categorizing on memory as discussed earlier' in this chapter.…”

“…In addition to being able to predict overall performance better than preschoolers, grade-school children are also capable of predicting which items on a Iist are more likely tobe remernbered than other items (Kelly et al, 1976;Monroe & Lange, 1977;Worden & Sladewski-Awig, 1982). There are developmental shifts in accuracy of individual-item predictions, however.…”

“…While preschool children overpredict their memory performance consistently, elementary-school children are much more accurate ( e.g., Flavell et al, 1970;Kelly, Scholnick, Travers, & Johnston, 1976;Levin, Yussen, De Rose & Pressley, 1977;Markman, 1973;Monroe & Lange, 1977;Worden & Sladewski-Awig, 1982). Whether elementary-school children over-or underestimate performance seems to vary with the memory task.…”

“…Might young children indicate that tbey are ready for a test because they understand the task to be one of learning quickly? lt is known that younger and older children use different response criteria in evaluating their readiness, with younger children applying more liberal criteria than older children (Worden & Sladewski-Awig, 1982). A similar problern plagues feeling-of-knowing data.…”

Emerging Metacognitive Processes During Childhood: Implications for Intervention Development with Children

“…Then, the children were asked how many pictures they thought they could remember if the pictures were covered and they were instructed to point to those. Results indicated that, on average, kindergartens estimated that they would be able to recall 11.17 of the 18 pictures presented, but they actually recalled 7.25 (Worden and Sladewski-Awig 1982). On average, second-graders predicted that they would recall 8.62 words, but actually recalled 9.5 words (Worden and Sladewski-Awig 1982).…”