Children's Organization and Metamemory Awareness in Their Recall of Familiar Information

In a series of 3 experiments, first-, third-, and fifth-grade children were asked to recall the names of their classmates. Clustering in recall was assessed on the basis of groupings in the classrooms (e. g., seating arrangement, reading groups) and on the basis of characteristics inherent in the children themselves (e. g., sex, race). Although levels of recall and clustering increased somewhat with age, memory performance was high for all groups of children. The majority of subjects at all 3 grade levels did not accurately identify the strategies they had used in recalling their classmates, although fifth graders were significantly more accurate in identifying a strategy than were first (experiments 2 and 3) and third (experiment 3) graders. Children accurately identifying the strategy they had used in class recall had higher clustering scores than inaccurate subjects (experiments 2 and 3), although levels of organization for this latter group of subjects were high at all grade levels. In experiment 3, first and third graders' memory performance and strategy awareness was not enhanced by prompts, whereas fifth graders' performance was enhanced. The results were discussed in terms of a 4-stage model suggesting that young children's organization in class recall is based on associative relations, with strategies being discovered while a subject is in the process of retrieving individual names.