The Effect of Organization Training on Children's Free Recall of Category Items

MOELY, BARBARA E., and JEFFREY, WENDELL E. The Effect of Organization Training on Children's Free Recall of Category Items. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1974, 45, 135-143. Recall was obtained from 48 6-7-year-old children, half after brief training in the use of category organization. Recall lists were constructed from conceptual categories different from those of the training task to find out if Ss could use the categorizing technique with new materials. 2 lists, which varied in E-determined relatedness of items within categories, were given in sessions 6 months apart. Trained Ss showed higher recall (both in the number of categories recalled and in the amount recalled per category), a tendency toward greater clustering of recall, and superior sorting of items by category. Higher list relatedness produced superior recall and greater organization. 2 methods of presentation did not yield differences. Several indices of organization were compared and evaluated.