Marion Perlmutter

Metamemory: A critical examination.

CAVANAUGH, JOHN C., and PERLMUTTER, MARION. Metamemory: A Critical Examination. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1982, 53, 11-28. This paper provides a critical examination of the current status of metamemory. A review of background influences, current conceptualizations, research methods, and some research findings is provided. Several limitations of metamemory are noted. In particular, there is no clear definition of the concept, assessment methods are inadequate, research has not gone beyond a demonstration stage, and a strong relationship between memory and metamemory generally has not been substantiated. Several issues that need to be addressed in a reconceptualization of metamemory are discussed. These issues include new assessment methods, redirection of research, predictions and testable hypotheses about the relationship between metamemory knowledge and memory performance, and the origins of metamemory. Although in its present form metamemory has little utility, a revised analysis of metamemory could have an important influence on conceptualizations of memory.

Forgetting and Use of Memory Aids in 20 to 70 Year Olds Everyday Life

In order to examine age differences in everyday memory experiences, twelve younger (mean age = 28) and twelve older (mean age = 59) adults kept diaries of their experiences of memory failures and use of memory aids. There was a general increase with age in the absolute number of memory failures, upset ratings about memory failures, and frequency of memory aid use. There were no age differences in the relative frequency of particular types of memory failures or memory aids that were used. The results suggested that older adults experience more memory failures and are more concerned about memory failures than younger adults, but that they attempt to deal with this problem by increased use of memory aids.

Social Influences on Children's Cognition: State of the Art and Future Directions

Publisher Summary This chapter reviews research on the relationship between social interaction and cognitive development. It proposes a framework that allows to explain a wide range of findings and to hypothesize about the nature of changes in social influence across development. Although it argues that social interaction may facilitate cognitive development, it also point to some limitations of this facilitation. The chapter acknowledges important individual differences in participation and in the effects of social influence and suggests that some tasks are more amenable to collaborative learning than others. The goal is to incorporate the available data into a developmental framework for studying and evaluating social influences on cognition. A theoretical overview of approaches to the study of social influences on childrens cognition is presented. The chapter offers a preliminary framework for conceptualizing social influences across development and discusses some additional issues that need to be considered when studying social influences on cognition.

Future time perspective and life events across adulthood

Age differences in future time perspective and the relations between future time perspective, locus of control, and past and anticipated future life events were examined in younger (ages 20 to 37) and older (ages 60 to 81) men and women. There were neither age nor gender differences in the time period participants reported thinking of most frequently. Participants reported thinking about the next few months more frequently than about other future time periods, which ranged from the next few days to many years. However, younger participants also reported thinking frequently about more distant time periods, whereas older subjects did not. Anticipation of discontinuous future events, control of impending events, and positive past events accounted for some age differences found in thinking about distant future time periods. No systematic gender differences were found.

Social influences on children's problem solving

Three studies examined the nature and limiting conditions of effects of peer interaction on childrens problem solving. 150 children (4 to 11 years old) worked alone or with a same-age peer at a computer

Interaction Between Mothers and Preschool Children when Reading a Novel and Familiar Book

Interaction between mothers and their 2-, 31/2-, and 5-year old children was examined during book reading sessions. Sixteen dyads at each age level read a novel and familiar book. Formal reading and interchange about story content increased with age and book familiarity, while labelling decreased with age and book familiarity. The results highlighted the informal teaching that takes place during early reading activity, and provide evidence that mothers adjust verbal input to their child in accord with the childs general cognitive and linguistic competence.

Development of visual memory in infants.

Publisher Summary Preverbal infants encode and retain some information about their visual world from the first hours of life. Even neonates demonstrate recognition memory. This chapter reviews and interprets infant visual recognition memory literature in terms of the particular methodologies used in each study. This literature is related to work on memory of older children and adults, highlighting many consistencies that appear in the memory systems of infants and more mature subjects. Although clear conclusions about specific aspects of infant recognition memory are not possible at this time, some generalizations have emerged. These may perhaps best be summarized by a set of hypotheses. As with all hypotheses, they remain to be scrutinized by further empirical evidence.

The Appearance and Disappearance of Age Differences in Adult Memory

Over the past two decades there has been much support for the commonly held belief that memory deteriorates in later adulthood. However, there has been less progress towards understanding the basis of this decline. Moreover, under some conditions age differences have not been observed. Contrasting the situations in which deficits are and are not observed should be instructive for gaining an understanding of age-related changes in memory. The present chapter includes a presentation of some of our research in which age deficits have been observed and a discussion of how the deficits often have been attenuated and sometimes eliminated. Finally, an attempt is made to integrate these results, as well as other findings in the literature, in a way that may shed light on the mechanisms underlying memory change in adulthood.

Recall, Clustering, and Metamemory in Young Children

Thirty-two 4-year-olds and thirty-two 6-year-olds were tested for free and cued recall following either play-and-remember or sort-and-remember instructions and assessed for their metamemory of the efficacy of conceptual and perceptual sorting strategies. The younger children recalled significantly more items under sort-and-remember than under play-and-remember instructions, whereas no significant recall differences between instructional conditions were found for the older children. However, 6-year-olds showed higher levels of recall than 4-yearolds in both instructional conditions. Category cues were much more effective than color cues, regardless of age. In addition, clustering scores indicated that conceptual organization at both encoding and retrieval increased with age and with instruction. These results show that from 4 to 6 years of age children are learning to spontaneously employ memory strategies. In addition, they highlight the increasing importance of conceptual organization to retention of young children. Finally, the metamemory data suggest that there may be a lag between children’s articulated declarative knowledge about the usefulness of conceptual organization and their procedural use of it.

Recall of related and unrelated lists by 2-year-olds☆

Abstract Ten boys and 10 girls ages 29–35 months were tested individually on a memory task requiring free recall of two-item lists. Each of the three trials consisted of the randomly ordered presentation of six boxes each containing a pair of objects selected from three categories (food, animals, and utensils). For three of these pairs, the objects belonged to the same conceptual category. The remaining three pairs were formed of unrelated items from the same categories. No sex differences in response were noted nor did performance change systematically over trials. The mean number of correct responses and the mean number of correct pairs was higher for related items. In addition, the children frequently reported the last object they saw first.