Memory Scanning for Pictures by Second and Fourth Grade Children.

Twenty children in each of grades 2 and 4 were given a reaction time task of the type in which Sternberg (1969) shows high-speed, serial, exhaustive scanning of information in memory. On each trial subjects were asked to memorize two, four, or six pictures and were then presented with a single picture probe. The subject made a key-pressing response to indicate whether the probe was in the memory set or not. Older subjects respond more rapidly than younger subjects in all conditions. The results strongly suggest that the memory sets are encoded visually and that the search for the probe is a high speed, exhaustive scan, although, due to difficulty of the task, the outcome is unclear for younger subjects at memory set size 6. The children are scanning memory for the presence or absence of a picture at the rate of 17-20 pictures per second. (Author)