The Development of the Distinction Between Perceiving and Memorizing

APPEL, LYNNE F.; COOPER, ROBERT G.; MCCARRELL, NANCY; SIMS-KNIGHT, JUDITH; YUSSEN, STEVEN R.; and FLAVELL, JOHN H. The Development of the Distinction between Perceiving and Memorizing. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1972, 43, 1365-1381. Preschool, first-grade, and fifth-grade children served as Ss in 2 experiments designed to test the developmental hypothesis that memorizing and perceiving are functionally undifferentiated for the young child, with deliberate memorization only gradually emerging as a separate and distinctive form of cognitive encounter with external data-a form that naturally includes but also goes beyond mere perceptual contact with those data. Evidence from both experiments largely confirmed the predictions, derived from this differentiation hypothesis, that young children would study no differently and subsequently recall no better when instructed to memorize items for future recall than when instructed merely to look at them.