Is There More than One Way to Recall a Story?

MANDLER, JEAN M., and DEFOREST, MARSHA. IS There More than One Way to Recall a Story? CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1979, 50, 886-889. Children's and adult's ability to use more than 1 method of recalling stories was investigated. Third-graders, sixth-graders, and adults were told 1 of 2 types of stories: (1) either normally constructed 2-episode stories in which 1 episode followed the other, or (2) stories in which the 2 episodes had been interleaved, thus violating canonical story structure. All subjects were able to recall the interleaved stories in a canonical separateepisode form but had difficulty in maintaining the interleaved order when asked to do so. The children had more difficulty in this regard than the adults, and the younger children were essentially unable to recall the stories in any other than their canonical form.