Developmental Changes in Recognition-in-Context Memory

KmASIc, KATHLEEN C.; SIEGEL, ALEXANDER W.; and ALLEN, GARY L. Developmental Changes in Recognition-in-Context Memory. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1980, 51, 302-305. To investigate developmental changes in recognition-in-context memory, kindergartners, fourth graders, and adults initially studied photographs of real-world scenes. Subsequently, subjects' recognition memory in the landmark-in-context condition was tested on the original scenes paired with 3 types of foils: different landmark/different context, different landmark/original context, and original landmark/different context. Subjects in the landmark-out-of-context condition were tested on landmarks extracted from original scenes paired with foils that were different isolated landmarks. Results indicated that (a) older children and adults were more accurate than kindergartners, (b) young children's difficulty in recognizing landmarks in context was not due solely to centering on landmarks exclusively, and (c) the visual encoding of landmark/context relations improves in efficiency over the course of childhood.