Two experiments investigated the role of kindergarten and elementary school children's spontaneous cognitive sets in pictorial discrimination learning. Data indicated that, in comparison to the behavior of older children, the behavior of kindergarteners is governed more by the perceptible than by the conceptual attributes of stimuli. (GO)

Attempts to identify specific components of a complex associative task, foreign language vocabulary learning, that might be particularly sensitive to developmental differences in imagery generation ability. Subjects were 95 second grade children enrolled in four schools and 90 sixth grade children enrolled in two of these same schools. (Author/MP)

In this study, the self-reported strategies of fifth, seventh, and ninth grade subjects used to learn a list of paired associates were correlated with actual learning performance to test the hypothesis that proficient learners are elaborators. (Author/SB)

To test the comparative efficacy of a visual imagery associative learning strategy in younger and older children, second and sixth grade children were presented a list of paired associates (concrete nouns) either at a faster or slower rate, under either an instruction to generate an interactive image for the pairs or a no strategy, control…

Subjects in three age groups judged absolute and relative frequencies of pictures and words presented in lists. There was relatively greater improvement with age in judgment of pictorial stimuli. Study results lend support to the frequency theory of discrimination learning. (DP)

Results of this experiment suggest that pronunciation has a unique effect on discrimination learning, and that the magnitude of this effect (relative to control performance) varies as a function of the type of materials used and the age of Ss. (Authors)

Imagery instructions facilitated the performance of sixth-, but not third-graders. (Authors)

Two experiments which tested recall differences among young children indicated: (1) organizational factors, not item processing per se, influenced previously found differences in children's recall of pictures following semantic and physical orienting tasks; and (2) physical orienting tasks may effectively inhibit subjects' processing of words, but…

Two experiments, involving 90 first-grade children, were conducted to test a retrieval-inefficiency explanation for the failure of visual imagery to facilitate young children's prose recall. (Author/MP)

A total of 45 fifth grade students were the subjects of an experiment offering support for a component of learning strategy (memory imagery). Various theoretical explanations of the image-tracing phenomenon are considered, including depth of processing, dual coding and frequency. (MS)