This Article Full Text (PDF) References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by Saarnio, D. A. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                         What's this?

Object Characteristics and Recall in Young Children

Northern Illinois University, U.S.A.

The purpose of this research was to investigate the hypothesis that preschool children are "perceptually bound" in their encoding of objects. This hypothesis implies that preschool children tend to encode perceptual attributes of objects in recall tasks, but not conceptual attributes. In Experiment 1, encoding of conceptual attributes of objects was examined by presenting children with pictures of objects that varied in typicality. Preschool children were more likely to remember typical objects than less typical objects. In Experiment 2, objects were orthogonally varied in size and typicality to examine the influence of both perceptual and conceptual attributes. Both types of attributes of objects were found to influence recall independently. In the context of variations in size and typicality, the probability of recall for both large and typical objects was greater than for small and less typical objects. The results show that children are influenced by both conceptual and perceptual stimulus characteristics, and, contrary to the hypothesis, preschool children are not "perceptually bound".

International Journal of Behavioral Development, Vol. 15, No. 4, 473-486 (1992)
DOI: 10.1177/016502549201500403


CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter    What's this?