Thesis (M.A.)--West Virginia University, 2004. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains viii, 76 p. : ill. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 40-43).

Thesis (M.A.)--Carleton University, 1996. / Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 135-140). Also available online in Scholars' Bank; and in ProQuest, free to University of Oregon users.

The aim of the present study was to investigate the development of children's ability to make use of external sources of information when they are studying or remembering different types of information. More specifically, the research was directed at two recurring problems for theories of memory development: the production deficit; and the problem of change. The production deficit describes children's failure to spontaneously use a strategy which is 'in' their behavioural repertoire. Use of the strategy can be induced with minimal training. The study contains a set of experiments which suggest a number of reasons why children may fail to use available strategies. Another major problem with theories of memory development lies in explaining changes in strategy use. Three experiments address the issue, and suggest two mechanisms which produce such changes. The experiments indicate that feedback may provide one means by which routines already in the cognitive system are generalised to serve memory goals. Monitoring of one's own performance may also produce such changes. These mechanisms are incorporated into a model of how early strategies might develop. Other theories of memory development have stressed young children's lack of knowledge about their own memory processes. This has been invoked to explain both the production deficit and developmental change. Apart from the demonstrations that monitoring may influence strategy generalization, the study found little evidence that knowledge about memory is related to either of these phenomena. Current theories of the development of knowledge about memory are reviewed, and it is suggested that there are major problems with explanations of memory which appeal to such knowledge. One weakness of such theories is that they fail to explain the origins of this knowledge. The present study provides an account of the early development of knowledge about memory. The results of the experiments are also considered in the light of recent speculations about developmental theories and also memory processes in adults. It is suggested that the mechanisms of change demonstrated in this study may well apply to other areas of development. It is also argued that recent theories may have misrepresented the nature of adult memory processes.

Recall of narrative content was studied in a sample of 170 children ranging from 5 to 11 years of age. Age range was divided into three equal intervals. The children within each interval were randomly assigned to four encoding conditions (symbolic, iconic, enactive, and symbolic-rehearsal) so that any effects of interactions between age-affected cognitive capacities and different encoding conditions could be gauged at 30 seconds and one week (after encoding). Between-ages (within condition) and between conditions (within age) comparisons revealed that age increase was generally, though not uniformly, accompanied by significant recall advantage. Analyses revealed that effects of different encoding conditions were sufficiently variable across the ages that age advantage was diminished when free recall performances of 5-7 year old children in enactive and iconic encoding conditions were compared to free recall performances of older children (9-11 years of age) in symbolic conditions of encoding. The results are discussed in relation to theoretical issues and educational questions. / Education, Faculty of / Educational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education (ECPS), Department of / Graduate

This study examined the effects of analyzing task demands on children's selection and spontaneous transfer of effective memory strategies. Two learning tasks and a transfer task were used. One hundred and eight children in grades 3 and 5 were randomly assigned to one of the three conditions, Control, Simple Instruction (SI), and Elaborated Instruction (EI). No strategy was taught to subjects in the Control condition. Subjects in the SI and EI conditions were instructed to use appropriate memory strategies for the learning task. In addition, subjects in the EI condition also received task-specific strategies information prior to the transfer task. Their application of the memory strategies to the transfer task was examined. Results indicated that the main effect of grade was significant for the categorical word-list task but not for the paired-associate task at both learning and transfer phases. In general, subjects in the two experimental conditions (SI and EI) performed better than the subjects in the Control condition, and that the EI subjects out performed the SI subjects. Transfer of the strategies occurred mainly in the EI condition which included the task-specific information. In other words, the more task-specific information subjects received concerning the memory strategies, the more likely they would transfer the strategies appropriately to new learning situations. / Education, Faculty of / Educational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education (ECPS), Department of / Graduate

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No description available.

The overarching goal of this thesis was to examine aspects of childhood amnesia in children, adolescents, and adults, and to evaluate theoretical explanations for the phenomenon. The research addressed three main questions. First, at what age does the boundary of childhood amnesia occur in adults, and what is the shape of the boundary? Second, is it possible for children to verbally express preverbal aspects of their memories after a 6-year delay? Third, is maternal narrative style during early childhood related to the age of adolescents� earliest autobiographical memories? In Experiment 1A, I examined whether the way in which we ask adults to sample their memories alters estimates of the offset of childhood amnesia. Independent groups of adults were asked to describe and date one memory from any time in their lives associated with each of six cue words (Lifespan Condition), one childhood memory associated with each of six cue words (Childhood Condition), or their earliest memory associated with each of six cue words (Cued Earliest Condition). A fourth group of adults was asked to describe and date their six earliest memories (Uncued Earliest Condition). As predicted, participants in the Cued Earliest and Uncued Earliest Conditions reported earlier memories than participants in the Childhood Condition, who in turn reported earlier memories than participants in the Lifespan Condition. Consistent with prior research, when adults were asked to report their earliest memories, with or without the use of cue words, the mean age of the earliest memory reported was between 3 and 4 years. In Experiment 1B, I examined the distribution of the early memories reported by six individual adults by asking them to report all the memories that they could recall from each year of childhood, until they had reported at least their 20 earliest memories. When the number of memories recalled was plotted as a function of age at event, the distributions looked like step functions, with the step occurring at ages 4-6 years. Participants also reported some early memories for events that occurred before this age. In Experiment 2, I examined children�s and parents� verbal and non-verbal recall for a specific event - the Magic Shrinking Machine - after a 6-year delay. The children were aged 27-51 months when they originally played with the machine. After a 6-year delay, nine of 46 children and 26 of 42 parents verbally recalled the event. There were no age-related differences in the amount or accuracy of the information that participants reported about the event. When children�s reports were compared to their task-relevant vocabulary measured at the time of the event, there were just two instances in which a child used a word to describe the event that had not been part of his or her productive vocabulary at the time of the event. Children showed no non-verbal recall of the event, relative to a group of age-matched controls. In Experiment 3, I tested the hypothesis that the way that parents talk about the past with their children during early childhood will influence the age of these children�s earliest autobiographical memories when they are older. Conversations about past events between 17 mother-child dyads were recorded on multiple occasions between the children�s 2nd and 4th birthdays. When these children were between the ages of 12-13 years, they were asked to describe their earliest autobiographical memory. Adolescents whose mothers used a greater ratio of elaborations to repetitions when discussing the past with their child during early childhood had earlier first memories than did adolescents whose mothers used a smaller ratio of elaborations to repetitions. The present findings on adults� earliest memories are consistent with a two-stage model of childhood amnesia. Theories that draw on multiple cognitive developments provide a more complete account of childhood amnesia than theories that focus on a single developmental milestone. I propose that neurological maturation and language acquisition set the stage for subsequent language-related developments that contribute to the emergence of autobiographical memory and, ultimately, the offset of childhood amnesia.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--School of Psychology, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2004. Directed by Anderson D. Smith. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 37-41).