YOUNG CHILDRENS USE OF SPATIAL CUES TO ORGANIZE AND RECALL OBJECT NAMES

This experiment was designed to determine whether children between 4 a nd 8 years old make use of spatial cues to organize and facilitate the ir retrieval of object names in a free-recall task. Twenty boys and 20 girls at each of 3 grade levels (preschool, I, and 3) were individual ly shown 9 small toy objects (either categorizable or unrelated) prese nted in a randomly arranged circular array. Three stand-up pictures of a bed, a couch, and a storage cabinet served as pretend hiding places for the presented stimuli. After a brief viewing period, the experime nter removed the objects from the child's view, left the location prop s in place, and asked for recall. Analyses of recall and clustering (A RC) scores showed significant grade-related improvements for item-reca ll scores and spatial-retrieval clustering scores, but not for taxonom ic clustering scores. Spatial clustering scores were significantly abo ve chance for Ist-and 3rd-grade children, but taxonomic clustering sco res remained at chance levels for all grades.