Author Type

Graduate Student

Date of Award

1987

Document Type

Thesis

Publication Status

Version of Record

Submission Date

October 2026

Abstract

The relationship between the mental effort requirement of strategy use and the development of an organizational strategy was investigated. 1st, 3rd, and 5th graders were assigned to one of four conditions reflecting the orthogonal combination of organizational instructions (training vs free recall) and item presentation (blocked by categories vs random). During two free recall trials of a list of 16 words, subjects' mental effort expenditure was assessed by measuring interference on a secondary task (finger tapping). The older children recalled more items and were more strategic than the younger children; however, there were no differences in interference among the grades. Training resulted in superior recall, clustering, and mental effort expenditure; blocked presentation led to greater recall and clustering, but not interference. It was suggested that the activation of items in semantic memory and the use of categorical organization to facilitate recall become more efficient with age, resulting in superior performance by the older children without corresponding increases in mental effort.

Extent

56 p.

Comments

Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 1987.|Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 1987.

Identifier

FADT14363

Format

pdf

Download

Share

COinS