Recall and recognition of pictures by children as a function of organization and distractor similarity.

Abstract

Studied verbal description, recall, and recognition of complex meaningful pictures by 168 1st and 2nd graders. Amount of organization in the stimuli and similarity of distractors was varied. Across Ss (sex, ethnic group, and grade level), verbal measures were poor predictors of recognition accuracy. Across stimuli, amount recalled and recognition accuracy were both related to amount of organization. Recognition was also a function of the type of transformations on the target that were used as distractors. For all transformations there was a close match between ability to recognize a transformation and judgment of dissimilarity of the transformation to the target. The TORSCA multidimensional scaling technique was applied to the similarity judgments to obtain a representation of a memory space for the targets and their transformations. The structure of this space was highly consistent across Ss and indicated that transformations on meaningful pictures can be related to each other in stable ways. Location of transformations within the space was related to type of picture and amount of organization in the picture. (27 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved)