Effects of drawing on children's item recall

In four experiments, we used item recall tasks to investigate recent claims that young children's event recall can be facilitated by drawing. In Exper iments 1 to 3, children of ages 5 to 8 years were tested 4 h after presenta tion for recall of a set of 25 items that had been presented in groups on a colored, segmented board. In Experiment 1, recall was enhanced by replacem ent of the objects on the board as they were recalled, but not by drawing t hem. In Experiments 2 and 3, drawing the board and objects concurrently wit h or just prior to verbal recall not only failed to facilitate recall, but significantly reduced the number of items reported by 5- to 6-year-olds. In Experiment 4, drawing again impaired recall of items that had been present ed as paired associates. Overall, results indicate that under some conditio ns drawing can impair children's recall rather than facilitate it, as repor ted in several recent studies. (C) 2001 by Academic Press.