The Last shall be First: How Memory Strength Affects Children's Retrieval

Abstract

When items are read out of storage during unconstrained recall, how should their memory strengths affect recall order? Commonsense argues that items will present themselves to consciousness in the order of their relative memory strength and that, hence, the read out sequence will be stronger to weaker. In experiments with 6- to 13-year-olds, however, this sequence was never obtained. Dichotomous measures of memory strength (strong vs. weak) showed that weak items were always recalled before strong items. Continuous measures of memory strength showed that the sequence was weaker to stronger to weaker. This pattern, which we term the cognitive triage effect, occurred at all age levels, for a variety of material, with different definitions of memory strength, and became more pronounced with age. Three results suggested that the pattern was not due to a deliberate strength-based ordering strategy: The pattern was observed in children as young as age 6; it was present at the earliest stages of recall; and adults (who also exhibited the pattern) were unaware of what they were doing.