DEVELOPMENT OF THE CATEGORY-RECALL RELATIONSHIP IN THE SORTING-RECALL TASK

The relationship between categorical organization and recall for children in grades two, four, and six (ages 8, 10 and 12 years, respectively), and for adults was investigated using the sorting-recall procedure. Subjects sorted unrelated words on individual cards into either two, four, or six categories prior to output, and recall performance improved significantly as a function of increased numbers of sorting categories. The category-recall relationship was shown to be independent of the effects of subject-determined item exposure time in sorting. This result was taken as evidence for a basic structural property of memory (chunking") that does not vary as a function of age. We further speculated that the slopes of the category-recall function obtained in this study suggest a limit on the size of organizational units in young children's memory. © 1979."