Teaching Preschool Children To Generate and Apply Mnemonic Strategies.

Two studies explored conditions in which preschoolers can understand and apply effective elaboration mnemonics. In the first experiment, 24 preschoolers ranging in age from 3 years, 10 months, to 5 years, 5 months were randomly assigned to interaction, no interaction, and control conditions. The experiment was designed to determine whether preschoolers can effectively use an elaboration mnemonic to enhance serial learning without specific instruction during retrieval, and whether preschoolers can generate their own associative images during encoding. Findings of the experiment demonstrated that preschoolers can successfully use a sophisticated elaboration mnemonic to enhance serial recall, even without specific retrieval cues. Under certain conditions, they can effectively generate their own relational imagery. In the second experiment, 27 preschoolers ranging in age from 3 years, 4 months, to 5 years, 2 months were randomly assigned to image generating, image and mnemonic generating, and control conditions. This experiment was designed to determine whether preschoolers can effectively transfer their knowledge to other, similar tasks, even without being told to do so, once they have learned a mnemonic strategy. The experiment demonstrated that preschoolers have the ability to transfer mnemonic strategies to different situations involving the same kind of learning task. (RH)