INDUCTION OF A MEMORY RETRIEVAL STRATEGY BY YOUNG-CHILDREN

This study examines children's modification of their own retrieval pro cesses in a cued recall task. Each experiment had multiple study-test trials with triplets of categorically related words (Horse-Pig-Cow). C ategory-orienting questions were asked at acquisition, and each trial had different triplet stimuli. The last triplet word was the target, a nd the retrieval cues were the whole-context cue (Horse-Pig), a part-c ontext cue (Horse), or a noncontext associate (Goat). The measure of r etrieval induction was recall increases across trials. Experiments 1 a nd 3 examined retrieval support for induction by 7- to 12-year olds by manipulating cue type. Experiments 2 and 4 manipulated acquisition va riables that might affect retrieval induction. The results showed indu ction of an effective retrieval strategy in the situations of maximum retrieval support even by the 7-year olds, and developmental differenc es occurred in the situations where the retrieval cues provided few hi nts about the acquisition encoding operation. The results suggest that monitoring and modification of retrieval processes should be distingu ished and that monitoring is necessary but not sufficient for inductio n of an effective retrieval strategy. The results have implications fo r understanding children's strategy-utilization deficiencies in memory tasks. (C) 1996 Academic Press, Inc.