Children's Free Recall: An Explanation of Sorts

2 experiments investigated the sorting-presentation procedure in order to determine the reason for its effectiveness for promoting organized recall in children. A number of possible hypotheses using categorical (experiment 1) and unrelated (experiment 2) stimulus materials were tested with second-grade subjects. Experimental conditions were designed to test the importance of (1) sensorimotor manipulation of the items to be remembered, (2) mental-decision processes involved when subjects decide how to group items, (3) blocked arrangement of items into sorting categories, and (4) spatial position cues resulting from constant locations for each category in the sorting scheme. The results showed that, for items which can be sorted into familiar categories, the main advantage of a sorting presentation is that the items are blocked into the appropriate categories; neither physical manipulation, mental decision making, nor spatial location cues were important for retrieval purposes. In contrast, when categorically unrelated materials were considered, the results showed that active mental decisions as to how items should be sorted were the crucial factor in the effectiveness of the sorting task for memory.