SELECTIVE PROCESSING IN ENCODING AND MEMORY - ANALYSIS OF RESOURCE-ALLOCATION BY KINDERGARTEN-CHILDREN

This study investigated the extent to which kindergarten children (mean age 5.8 years) allocate their processing resources selectively to the relevant components of a visual array. On each trial the child was presented with an array containing either one, two, or four items, and a verbal cue designating either one, two, or four of these items as relevant. For different groups of children the cue occurred either before or after the stimulus array, in order to investigate the stages of processing at which kindergarteners are able to initiate selection. The results indicated that kindergarteners are able to exert considerable control over the allocation of resources during the initial perceptual processing of a visual stimulus, but they have only limited ability to initiate such selective allocation in memory, after initial encoding has taken place. © 1979.