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Eliminating alternatives: Preschool children's use of indirect memory cues
Author(s) -
Whittaker S. J.
Publication year - 1986
Publication title -
british journal of developmental psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.062
H-Index - 75
eISSN - 2044-835X
pISSN - 0261-510X
DOI - 10.1111/j.2044-835x.1986.tb01011.x
Subject(s) - recall , psychology , cue dependent forgetting , cognitive psychology , recall test , developmental psychology , identity (music) , free recall , physics , acoustics
Two studies investigated preschool children's ability to use indirect external cues to eliminate possible solutions in a retrieval problem. Children observed four toy animals being hidden at four identical locations and recall was tested by the experimenter asking the child what was at each location in turn. Two types of cues were given to assist recall. These provided information about ( a ) the identity of the four animals which were hidden; and ( b ) what was at locations other than the one being probed. The first experiment investigated whether children who looked at both these sets of cues were able to eliminate possible retrieval solutions. Recall and error data indicated that they could do so. In the second experiment the two types of cues were presented separately. Only those cues which provided information about what was at locations other than the one being searched were found to help recall. The results are discussed for their implications for recent accounts of the development of cueing.