Robert E. Guttentag

The Mental Effort Requirement of Cumulative Rehearsal: A Developmental Study.

Abstract Three experiments were conducted examining the relationship between the mental effort requirement of cumulative rehearsal and spontaneous utilization of the strategy by children. Mental effort was assessed by measuring the interference produced by cumulative rehearsal with a simultaneously performed secondary task (finger-tapping). It was found in Experiment 1 that second- and third-grade children experienced significantly more finger-tapping interference during instructed cumulative rehearsal than did sixth-grade children, an effect which, Experiment 2 demonstrated, could not be attributed simply to developmental differences in time-sharing performance. In Experiment 3 it was found that, for children in grades 2 through 5, rehearsal set size during spontaneous rehearsal was negatively correlated with amount of finger-tapping interference during instructed cumulative rehearsal, suggesting that spontaneous use of a cumulative rehearsal strategy was negatively correlated with the mental effort requirement of strategy use. These findings support the view that the mental effort requirement of strategy use may influence childrens strategy selection on memory tasks.

THE EFFECTS OF RESTRICTING HAND GESTURE PRODUCTION ON LEXICAL RETRIEVAL AND FREE RECALL

This study examined hand gesture production and the effects of restricting gestures on lexical retrieval and free recall. Participants were presented 50 definitions and attempted to retrieve each target word. Half the participants performed the task under restricted hand gesture conditions. Participants with unrestricted hand gestures retrieved and subsequently recalled significantly more words than participants whose hands were restricted. The role of hand gesture production in retrieval of verbal information from semantic memory is discussed. In addition, the lexical retrieval and recall data are analyzed as a function of high and low verbal skill and quantity and type of hand gesture production. The tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon is discussed in the context of gesture use and retrieval advantages.

Age differences in dual-task performance: procedures, assumptions, and results

Abstract The secondary task paradigm requires subjects to perform a primary task of interest concurrently with an attention-demanding secondary task. In recent years, an increasing number of developmental studies have utilized the paradigm to test for age differences in the mental resource requirements of various cognitive tasks. The present paper reviews the findings from the developmental secondary-task research and discuss the various assumptions which underlie the use of the secondary-task paradigm to test for age differences in resource demands. The results reviewed suggest that there are age-related differences during childhood in the amount of cognitive resources required to perform a variety of cognitive tasks and to execute a variety of cognitive operations. However, many of the methodological and theoretical assumptions upon which these conclusions are based are open to challenge. It is concluded that, in the future, researchers using secondary-task procedures should make more of an attempt to validate their conclusions through the use of convergent operations.

Children's spontaneous rehearsal: Transitions in strategy acquisition

In three experiments, childrens spontaneous rehearsal was examined under two conditions of item presentation using a within-subject design. Under “normal presentation” conditions, visually presented items were removed from view after their initial presentation. In contrast, under “items-available presentation” conditions, all items remained visible after their initial presentation, a procedure designed to minimize the processing demands of cumulative, multi-item rehearsal. It was found in Experiments 1 and 2 that children who utilized a multi-item rehearsal strategy under normal presentation conditions rehearsed with even larger multi-item rehearsal sets with items available. Of the children who used a single-word strategy under normal conditions, approximately 70% rehearsed single words with items available (“single-word rehearsers”), whereas approximately 30% rehearsed cumulatively with items available (“transitional rehearsers”). In a third experiment, we retested some of the children from Experiment 2 one year after their initial testing. We found that most of the children previously classified as transitional, but not those who had consistently rehearsed single words, had advanced to using a cumulative rehearsal strategy under normal presentation conditions.

Children's understanding of anticipatory regret and disappointment

The anticipation of regret and disappointment plays an important role in decision making by adults. The anticipation of regret may also lead to a desire to avoid feedback about likely outcomes of non-chosen courses of action, while the anticipation of disappointment is associated with avoidance of risk-taking and the deliberate dampening of expectations. The present study used the context of a simple game to examine childrens understanding of these anticipatory regret and disappointment emotion-regulation strategies. It was found that even though children 7/8 years of age were able to understand the situational factors that produce disappointment and regret, it was not until 9/10 years of age that children exhibited an understanding of anticipatory regret emotion-regulation strategies, and even at this age children did not exhibit an understanding of the use of dampening of expectations as a strategy for coping with the anticipation of disappointment.

Identifying the basis for the word frequency effect in recognition memory.

Recent theories of recognition memory have identified two bases on which recognition-memory judgments may be made: recollection, which involves retrieval of contextual information from an earlier episode of stimulus presentation; and familiarity, which is distinguished by a general sense of familiarity in the absence of recollection. Four experiments were conducted to test whether the word frequency effect (WFE) in recognition memory (superior performance with low- in comparison with high-frequency targets) results from recollection-based processes, familiarity-based processes, or both. In two of the experiments, superior memory for aspects of the study context was found for low-frequency in comparison with high-frequency words, suggesting frequency-related differences in recollection. The other two experiments used Jacobys (1991) inclusion/exclusion paradigm to provide estimates of the contribution of recollection and familiarity to recognition. In both experiments the data suggested that the WFE is primarily a recollection-based phenomenon. These findings suggest that the recognition memory WFE for old items results primarily from the effects of word frequency on recollection. The implications of these findings for theories of recognition memory are discussed.

Memorability judgments for high- and low-frequency words

Five experiments were conducted in order to examine subjects’ judgments of the memorability of high- (HF) and low-frequency (LF) words in the context of a recognition memory task. In Experiment 1, the subjects were provided study/test experience with a list of HF and LF words prior to making memorability judgments for a new list of HF and LF items. The findings were consistent with previous evidence (Greene & Thapar, 1994; Wixted, 1992) suggesting that subjects are not explicitly aware of the greater recognition memorability of LF words. Experiments 2–5 embedded the memorability judgment task within the recognition test itself. In these experiments, the subjects consistently gave higher memorability ratings to LF items. The contrast between the pattern of results found when the subjects made their judgments at the time of list presentation (Experiment 1) and that when they made their judgments during the recognition test (Experiments 2–5) is consistent with recent evidence that even seemingly highly related metamnemonic judgments (e.g., ease of learning judgments vs. judgments of learning for the same items) may be based on very different factors if they occur at different points in the study/test cycle. The present findings are also consistent with the possibility that very rapid retrieval of memorability information for HF and LF words may affect recognition decisions and may contribute to the recognition memory word frequency effect.

Relationships between study organization, retrieval organization, and general and strategy-specific memory knowledge in young children

The present study examined relationships between young childrens memory knowledge and their use of taxonomic and color memory organization. Forty-eight 5-, 6-, and 7-year-olds were administered metamemory tests of organization-strategy knowledge and general memory knowledge, and were tested on two study-recall tasks before, and two study-recall tasks after, training in the use of color or taxonomic organization. Study organization (grouping) scores were low before training, but improved significantly in post-training tasks. Training effects were less pronounced for retrieval organization (clustering) and did not occur for item recall. Relationships between taxonomic study and retrieval organization were apparent only for the 7-year-olds, while relationships between color organization at study and retrieval were not apparent at any age level. Relationships between metamemory, strategy-use, and recall proficiency were evident on some tasks for 7-year-olds, but not for younger children. Although teacher ratings of the childrens mastery orientations were also found to be related to recall proficiency for the older subjects, specific strategy knowledge was a more consistent correlate of strategy use and amount recalled.

Dual-task research and the development of memory☆

Abstract C. J. Brainerd and V. F. Reyna (Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 47, 1–18, 1989) proposed an output-interference theory as an alternative to resource theory to account for the results from dual-task studies. The present paper questions whether the two theories can be differentiated empirically as readily as Brainerd and Reyna suggest. It is also argued here that the important differences between the theories may lie at a level of analysis which is different from that which is of interest to most memory development researchers.

Adult age differences in the attentional capacity demands of letter matching

The attentional demands of letter matching were assessed using a secondary task technique with three adult subject groups. The mean ages were: Group 1 = 19.9 years, Group 2 = 58.7 years, Group 3 = 68.9 years. The primary task was letter matching on the basis of physical identity (PI) or name identity (NI); the secondary task was speeded response to a tone. Relative to baseline (single-task) tone RTs, subjects at all ages responded more slowly in the dual-task condition to tones on name-match trials than on physical-match trials. Also, the proportional difference in tone RT between baseline and dual-task trials was significantly larger for Group 3 than Group 1, but this analysis did not reveal a larger age difference for NI than PI matching. However, a second analysis revealed that absolute differences in tone RT between baseline and dual-task trials increased with age, and the magnitude of this effect was larger for NI than PI matching. The implications of the findings for theories of age differences in attentional capacity, and for issues in the measurement of attentional demands, are discussed.