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Abstract
We ask the question: Which aspects of immediate memory performance improve with age? In two studies, we reexamine the widely held view that primary memory capacity estimates derived from children's immediate free recall are age invariant. This was done by assessing children's immediate free-recall accuracy while also measuring the order in which they elected to recall items (Experiment 1) and by encouraging children to begin free recall with items from towards the end of the presented list (Experiment 2). Across samples aged between 5 and 8 years we replicated the previously reported age-related changes in free-recall serial position functions when aggregated across all trials of the standard task, including an absence of age differences in the recency portion of this curve. However, we also show that this does not reflect the fact that primary memory capacity is constant across age. Instead, when we incorporate order of report information, clear age differences are evident in the recall of list-final items that are output at the start of a participant's response. In addition, the total amount that individuals recalled varied little across different types of free-recall tasks. These findings have clear implications for the use of immediate free recall as a means of providing potential indices of primary memory capacity and in the study of the development of immediate memory.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 1871-1894 |
Number of pages | 24 |
Journal | Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology |
Volume | 68 |
Issue number | 9 |
Early online date | 16 Feb 2015 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2015 |
Bibliographical note
Date of Acceptance: 27/07/2014Structured keywords
- Memory
Keywords
- Primary memory
- free recall
- immediate memory development
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Data associated with Jarrold et al. (2015), QJEP
Zarandi, A. (Creator), Jarrold, C. (Creator), Hall, D. (Creator), Harvey, C. E. (Contributor), Tam, H. (Contributor) & Towse, J. (Contributor), University of Bristol, 19 Aug 2015
DOI: 10.5523/bris.1mjf8wp7s549q1cpp7yqidg451, http://data.bris.ac.uk/data/dataset/1mjf8wp7s549q1cpp7yqidg451
Dataset