The Effects of Differential Incentives on Second-Grade Rehearsal and Free Recall

Abstract Second-grade children's overt rehearsal and free recall were examined in two independent incentive conditions: a constant incentive condition in which all words were associated with 5¢, and a differential incentive condition in which one half of the words were associated with 10¢ and the other half with 1¢. Results supported the major hypothesis that, compared to the constant condition, differential incentive Ss would exhibit more mature forms of strategic rehearsal by increasing their level of re-entry processing and their rehearsal set size. These strategies have been previously produced in grade 2 children only through direct training procedures; the present experiment is the first to induce strategic rehearsal for grade 2 through incentive manipulations. Further findings indicated that primacy effect in the differential condition was mediated by recall from short- and not long-term memory.