Applying how adults rehearse to understand how rehearsal may develop

The Diversity of Strategies Used in Working Memory for Colors, Orientations, and Positions: A Quantitative Approach to a First-Person Inquiry

The study of individual experience during the performance of a psychological task using a phenomenological approach is a relatively new area of research. The aim of this paper was to combine first- and third-person approaches to investigate whether the strategies individuals use during a working memory task are associated with specific task conditions, whether the strategies combine to form stable patterns, and whether the use of specific strategies is related to task accuracy. Thirty-one participants took part in an experiment in which they were instructed to remember colors, orientations, or positions of stimuli presented in a change detection task. After every 7th-15th trial, participants took part in an in-depth phenomenological interview in which they described their experiences during the trial that immediately preceded the interview. Qualitative analysis revealed a set of 18 strategies that participants used while performing the task, which we divided into active and passive strategies of encoding, maintenance, and retrieval. Quantitative analysis revealed that while many strategies were used in all task conditions, some strategies and their combinations may be better suited to the specific task demands, while others are more general in nature. The results also suggest a distinction between strategies for encoding object identity and spatial features. Finally, our results did not provide robust evidence for a relationship between specific strategies and task accuracy.

No Evidence That Articulatory Rehearsal Improves Complex Span Performance

It is usually assumed that articulatory rehearsal improves verbal working memory. Complex span is the most used paradigm to assess working memory functioning; yet, we still lack knowledge about how participants rehearse in this task, and whether these rehearsals are beneficial. In Experiment 1, we investigated the patterns of naturally occurring overt rehearsals in a complex span task requiring processing of a non-verbal distractor task. For comparison, another group of participants completed a matched simple span task with an unfilled delay in between the memoranda. Time permitting, participants rehearsed the memory list in forward serial order, a strategy known as cumulative rehearsal. The degree of cumulative rehearsal was correlated with recall accuracy in both span tasks. Rehearsal frequency was, however, reduced in complex span compared to simple span. To assess the causal role of rehearsal in complex span, we trained a group of participants in a cumulative rehearsal strategy in Experiment 2. This instruction substantially increased the prevalence of cumulative rehearsals compared to a control group. However, the increase in cumulative rehearsal did not translate into an increase in recall accuracy. Our results provide further evidence that rehearsal does not benefit working memory performance.

Do children use different forms of verbal rehearsal in serial picture recall tasks? A multi-method study

Use of verbal rehearsal is a key issue in memory development. However, we still lack detailed and triangulated information about the early development and the circumstances in which different forms of rehearsal are used. To further understand significant factors that affect children's use of various forms of rehearsal, the present study involving 108 primary school children adopted a multi-method approach. It combined a carefully chosen word length effect method with a self-paced presentation time method to obtain behavioural indicators of verbal rehearsal. In addition, subsequent trial-by-trial self-reports were gathered. Word length effects in recall suggested that phonological recoding (converting images to names - a necessary precursor for rehearsal) took place, with evidence of more rehearsal among children with higher performance levels. According to self-paced presentation times, cumulative rehearsal was the dominant form of rehearsal only for children with higher spans on difficult trials. The combined results of self-paced times and word length effects in recall suggest that "naming" as simple form of rehearsal was dominant for most children. Self-reports were in line with these conclusions. Additionally, children used a mixture of strategies with considerable intra-individual variability, yet strategy use was nevertheless linked to age as well as performance levels.

Nonspecific Retroactive Interference in Children and Adults

Retroactive interference (RI) is a primary source of forgetting and occurs when new information disrupts or damages an existing memory. Prior research has shown that children are susceptible to RI when the to-be-remembered and interfering information are similar, but it is unclear whether they are also vulnerable to nonspecific RI . This form of interference occurs when a memory is disrupted by an unrelated and dissimilar distractor task, and the present study explored six- and seven-year-olds susceptibility to such nonspecific RI. In two experiments, participants learnt a list of words and completed a free recall test 5 min later. During the interval, participants either remained quiet (the control condition) or completed spot-the-difference puzzles (the interference condition). In Experiment 1, the children were highly susceptible to nonspecific interference, whereas a sample of adults were not affected by the interfering task. However, when a new sample of children were given more time to encode and retrieve the words in Experiment 2, they were able to resist interference. Nonspecific RI can damage children's memory, but they do have the ability to prevent this form of interference in certain circumstances.