THE DEVELOPMENT OF SHORT-TERM VISUAL MEMORY IN YOUNG-CHILDREN

A probed memory task was used to investigate children's short-term vis ual memory for an object's spatial location or colour. In Experiment 1 , 5-year-olds recognised the location of one of three coloured shapes that had appeared in a random spatio-temporal order. Two aspects of th e children's performance confirmed their reliance on visual memory. Fi rst, performance was impaired when the shapes were visually similar. S econdly, the serial position curve was characteristic of visual memory , with a final-item recency effect and no primacy effect. Experiment 2 assessed 5- and 7-year-old children's memory for a shape's colour or its spatial location. Although there was developmental improvement in memory for spatial location, that was confined to pre-recency items, t here was no effect of age with regard to the recall of colour. The res ults go against Hasher and Zacks' (1979) proposal that, in contrast to colour, spatial location would not show developmental improvement bec ause it is remembered automatically. The concept of an object file, th at was devised specifically to explain how different visual features o f an object are represented (Kahneman & Treisman, 1984), is considered as a potential explanation of both the serial position curve and the distinctive behaviour of different visual features. It is suggested th at although 5-year-olds are as adept as 7-year-olds at creating and im mediately accessing an object file, they are less able to access infor mation about the visual features of objects whose files are no longer current.