Preschoolers' Memory Monitoring: Feeling-of-Knowing Judgments

CULTICE, JOAN C.; SOMERVILLE, SUSAN C.; and WELLMAN, HENRY M. Preschoolers' Memory Monitoring: Feeling-of-Knowing Judgments. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1983, 54, 1480-1486. The memory-monitoring abilities of 4and 5-year-olds were investigated using a recall-failure, judgment, recognition sequence involving personal names. Children were shown color photographs of other children and adults, varying in familiarity, and asked initially to recall their names. Feeling-of-knowing judgments and judgments about whether the child had seen the person were obtained in all cases where naming failed. Both types of judgment were found to predict subsequent recognition performance, indicating accurate memory monitoring. Signal detection analyses revealed sensitivity and lack of bias in the monitoring activities of both age groups. These results demonstrated that preschoolers possess basic monitoring abilities that are important for the development of subsequent skills such as the allocation of mnemonic effort.