Going beyond the facts: Young children extend knowledge by integrating episodes

The major question posed in this research was whether 4- and 6-year-olds productively extend their knowledge by integrating information acquired in separate episodes. The vehicle was a read-aloud activity during which children were presented with a novel fact in each of two passages. In Experiment 1...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of experimental child psychology 2010-12, Vol.107 (4), p.452-465
Main Authors: Bauer, Patricia J., Souci, Priscilla San
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Age Differences
Age Factors
Biological and medical sciences
Child
Child development
Child, Preschool
Children & youth
Cognitive Processes
Developmental psychology
Experimental psychology
Female
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Humans
Integration
Knowledge
Knowledge Level
Learning
Learning - physiology
Male
Memory
Memory - physiology
Mental Recall - physiology
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Reading
Recall
Recall (Psychology)
Recognition
Recognition (Psychology)
Recognition (Psychology) - physiology
Task Performance and Analysis
Young Children
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Summary:The major question posed in this research was whether 4- and 6-year-olds productively extend their knowledge by integrating information acquired in separate episodes. The vehicle was a read-aloud activity during which children were presented with a novel fact in each of two passages. In Experiment 1, both age groups showed evidence of integration between the passages. For the 6-year-olds, the evidence came in the form of responses to open-ended questions. The 4-year-olds recognized the correct answers but did not generate them in the open-ended question format. The 6-year-olds who generated the correct answers also were likely to recall both of the individual facts presented in the passages. In Experiment 2, we tested whether the 4-year-olds’ integration performance would improve if their memory for the individual facts improved. Extra exposure to the individual facts resulted in higher levels of integration performance in both recall and recognition testing. The roles of memory and other potential sources of age-related differences in integration performance are discussed.
ISSN:0022-0965
1096-0457
DOI:10.1016/j.jecp.2010.05.012