The Effects of Distraction and Added Perceptual Cues on the Delayed Reaction of Very Young Children

The effects of unlabeled and labeled picture cues on very young children’s memory for location

“…Furthermore, in direct contrast to the Loughlin and Daehler (1973) data, even the youngest children performed better on trials in which picture cues were available. One reason for the disparity in the results of the two studies is suggested by the additional finding of the present investigation: that performance was best on trials in which labeled pictures were provided.…”

“…She presented a single box to the child, one of four boxes with distinctive patterns on their lids, and hid a toy in it; she then placed the box in an array with the other three boxes before the child searched. Loughlin and Daehler (1973) also found picture cues were not facilitating to children younger than 3 years, although they were helpful to older children. They examined 27-, 32-, and 42-month-olds in a four-choice delayed-response task.…”

“…Over the next 2 years localization improves further. While the nature of this development is not entirely clear, both Babska (I965) and Loughlin and Daehler (1973) have suggested that only children over 3 years of age are likely to encode and use any discriminative information other than location to guide search for absent objects.Babska's argument was based on her finding that 27-month-olds performed poorly when required to find a hidden toy in the absence of location cues. She presented a single box to the child, one of four boxes with distinctive patterns on their lids, and hid a toy in it; she then placed the box in an array with the other three boxes before the child searched.…”

“…Over the next 2 years localization improves further. While the nature of this development is not entirely clear, both Babska (I965) and Loughlin and Daehler (1973) have suggested that only children over 3 years of age are likely to encode and use any discriminative information other than location to guide search for absent objects.…”

Memory Development Between 2 and 20

“…The results ofthe early studies were ambiguous. Although Horn and Myers (1978), Loughlin and Daehler (1973), and Ratner and Myers (1980) found almost no evidence that children under three years of age profit from the presentation of retrieval cues, Perlmutter and her associates provided demonstrations that 2-to 3-year-olds make use of retrieval cues under certain conditions. For instance, Blair, Perlmutter, and Myers (1978) showed children colored pictures one at a time.…”