The Effects of Mode of Presentation on Encoding Processes in Children's Short-Term Memory.

The purpose of this study was to determine whether children as young as second-graders could encode categorically within an abstract evaluative dimension. The study uses mode of stimulus presentation (auditory or visual) as an independent variable. The subjects were 40 white middle class children from grades 2, 4, and 6, who were randomly assigned to one of four experimental conditions. A control group received four trials of words from the same subjective category. Interference between trials followed Wicken's release from proactive interference paradigm and consisted of a color naming distractor task. An experimental group received three trials of words from the same subjective category with a shift to another category on the fourth trial. The interference remained the same. Subjects were asked to recall the words after a 15 second interference duration. Some of the results indicated that the experimental groups at each grade level show an increase in recall from trial 3 to trial 4. Significant main effects were found for overall recall performance between grades and across trials. The mode of presentation did not appear to have a differential effect on the children's encoding at any grade level. (MKM)