OPTIMIZATION VERSUS EFFORTFUL PROCESSING IN CHILDRENS COGNITIVE TRIAGE - CRITICISMS, REANALYSES, AND NEW DATA

Cognitive triage refers to the surprising fact that easy-to-retrieve memories do not come to mind before hard-to-retrieve memories during unconstrained recall. In a previous article in this journal, we evaluated two competing explanations of this phenomenon: fuzzy-trace theory′s optimization model of recall and an effortful-processing model. Although our data favored the optimization model, the key results (quadratic relationships between the order in which children initially access stored information and the rate at which they subsequently forget it) are subject to three objections: potential third-variable artifacts, potential impermanence of effortful-processing effects, and indirectness. We report some follow-up analyses that address these objections. We also report a new experiment in which children′s cognitive triage was studied under conditions of enforced effortful processing. The results continued to favor the optimization model. © 1993 by Academic Press, Inc.