Akira Kobasigawa

Children's spontaneous allocation of study time: Differential and sufficient aspects ☆

Abstract Two interrelated aspects of allocation of study time were examined in grades 1, 3, 5, and 7 children: (a) distributing study time so that more difficult units were given more emphasis than others (differential allocation) and (b) determining how much time to spend for studying in order to meet the study goal (sufficient allocation). Children were asked to study a set of booklets (one “easy” or highly related and one “hard” or unrelated) of paired-associate items until they were sure they could remember all the pairs perfectly. While grades 1 and 3 children spent approximately the same amount of time on hard pairs as they spent on easy pairs, grades 5 and 7 children spent a greater amount of time on hard pairs than they did on easy pairs. Age-related improvement in allocation of sufficient time was evidenced by the significantly higher number of older children (grades 5 and 7) than younger children (grades 1 and 3) achieving perfect recall. Older students also exhibited a greater knowledge of and tendency to use self-testing strategies to monitor how well learned items were. It should be noted, however, that even many of the older children were not entirely successful at recalling the items perfectly.

Spontaneous Allocation of Study Time by First- and Third-Grade Children in a Simple Memory Task

Abstract Two aspects of study time allocation were examined in first- and third-grade children: allocating more time to more difficult material (differential allocation) and allocating sufficient time to meet the study goal (sufficient allocation). We asked children to study names of familiar and unfamiliar objects until they were sure they could name all the items correctly. Each object was depicted on a separate card affixed with a strip of recording tape. By running the card through a Language Master machine, the children could learn the name of the object on the card. Both first- and third-grade children spontaneously spent more time studying the names of the objects that they initially did not know in the hard-task category, (e.g., anvil, torii) than they spent studying the names of the objects in the easy-task category (e.g., apple, frog). More of the older children used a self-testing strategy to assess the progress of learning than did the younger children. Many of the self-testing users at the th...

Free Recall and Retrieval Speed of Categorized Items by Kindergarten Children.

Kindergarten Ss were presented with 16 pictorial items in four category sets or a partially random ordem with one item from each category composing the four presentation sets. The pictures were presented either on conceptually related background pictures or on white backgrounds. The categorically grouped presentation facilitated free recall performance, both in terms of number of items recalled and the speed with which the items were recalled, and increased the amount of clustering in recall. Categorical clustering in recall was associated with shorter within- than between-category intervals and for those Ss who recalled items from each of four categories successively, the over-all temporal pattern in recall closely approximated that found with adults. No background effects were found.

Developmental Differences in Children's Spontaneous Allocation of Study Time

Abstract Developmental differences in two components of allocation of study time were examined: (1) the ability to allocate more time to more difficult material (i.e., differential allocation), and (b) the ability to allocate sufficient time to meet the recall goal (i.e., sufficient allocation). Children in first, third, and fifth grade were asked to study paired-associate items until they were sure they could recall all the pairs perfectly. The study list consisted of highly related pairs of objects (e.g., bat-ball) and unrelated pairs of objects (e.g., frog-book), classified as easy and hard pairs, respectively. Although first- and third-grade children spent approximately the same amount of study time on hard pairs as they spent on easy pairs, fifth-grade children spontaneously allocated significantly more time to the hard pairs than to the easy pairs. The recall scores for the hard items were far below the criterion, suggesting that children at all ages did not spend a sufficient amount of study time t...

Children’s Utilization of Study Time: Differential and Sufficient Aspects

A quote from Bloom (1974) seems a fitting way to begin this chapter: “All learning, whether done in school or elsewhere, requires time.” Thus, from the learner’s perspective, in addition to the need to process information to be learned in some manner, some expenditure of time is also required for learning. We can refer to time, then, as a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for learning to occur. In many situations, a learner has considerable freedom in terms of spending time for learning activities; for example, whether to spend time studying for a test, how long to study, what material to spend the most time on. It is our goal in this chapter to examine some of the key processes involved in children’s utilization of time for studying and to suggest some promising directions for future research.

Young Children's Knowledge of Balance Scale Problems

Abstract Five- and 7-year-old childrens knowledge of balance scale problems was assessed in terms of Sieglers (1976, 1981) rule-assessment techniques using two tasks: (a) Sieglers tasks in which the experimenter placed weights in various configurations on the balance scale and asked children to predict the outcome (left/right side down or balance) and (b) a construction task in which the experimenter placed weights on only one side of the balance scale and asked children to place a specific number of weights on the other side of the scale to generate a desired outcome (left/right side down or balance). A majority of children at both age levels (75%) relied only on the weight dimension to solve Sieglers tasks. When the construction problems were introduced, many of the 5-year-olds continued to use weight only, whereas many of the 7-year-olds placed the weight by relying on the distance dimension, and still other 7-year-olds relied on both the weight and distance dimensions. The utility of Sieglers rul...

Monitoring Retrieval Processes by Children

Summary Six- and eight-year-old children were shown a list of categorized items representing three different category sizes. Half of the children were asked to estimate the number of items assigned to each category prior to being tested for recall of the list, while the other half did not receive such instructions. Recall was cued by pictorial category cues, but was terminated at childrens own choice. For both age groups, childrens estimates of category sizes became progressively larger as the actual category sizes became larger, indicating that even six-year-olds have the ability to acquire rather accurate knowledge about category size during the item presentation. The children were also found to terminate their memory search promptly when they had recalled all of the required items, but conducted an extended search when there were additional items unrecalled. These findings suggest that six-year-olds have the ability to monitor their search processes using their knowledge about the category size.

EFFECTS OF RETRIEVAL CUES ON CHILDREN'S RECALL FOLLOWING FREE- OR CUED-RECALL INSTRUCTIONS

40 third and 40 sixth graders were given a task in which recall items, e.g., monkey, were presented with highly related picture cues, e.g., zoo. Cued recall produced higher recall than a free-recall procedure when Ss were told initially recall would be tested in the presence of cues, but the cued- vs free-recall difference was not statistically reliable when Ss were initially instructed merely to memorize the items. It appears that Ss made use of storage cues, without being specifically instructed to do so, if they knew that these cues would be present during retrieval.