CAN AGE X LEARNABILITY INTERACTIONS EXPLAIN THE DEVELOPMENT OF FORGETTING

Although recent developmental studies have identified robust age differences in forgetting rates, these differences may be artifacts caused by confounding age with an underlying relationship between forgetting rates and children's learning abilities. This possibility was examined in some experiments that implemented path-analytic causal modeling. None of the path analyses supported the artifactual hypothesis. On the contrary, there were strong causal paths between development and forgetting rates when the potentially confounding influences of learning ability were eliminated, and the relationship between learning ability and forgetting rates was both weak and inconsistent. Coincidentally, these results also ruled out another artifactual hypothesis based on age variability in overlearning.