WHAT CAUSES A MEMORY STRATEGY UTILIZATION DEFICIENCY

In a ''utilization deficiency,'' a child spontaneously produces an app ropriate strategy but receives little or no benefic from it for recall . Three studies provided evidence for two causes-children's failure to relate the task situation to their event knowledge or to link the str ategy to a second strategy, in this case linking a selective attention strategy to a labeling strategy. In Study 1, 83 kindergartners and fi rst graders were asked to remember the locations of 6 objects (e.g., a nimals) from a set of 12 objects (animals, household objects). The mos t efficient study strategy is a selective strategy-looking only at obj ects to be remembered. Selectivity predicted recall when the task was embedded in a story about a familiar context but not in the absence of this context. In Studies 2 and 3, instructing spontaneously selective preschool, kindergarten, and first-grade children to label the releva nt objects improved recall. We discuss the possible mechanisms underly ing the influence of knowledge and strategy linking and the role of pr oduction, mediational, and utilization deficiencies in the development of strategies.