Strategy Utilization Deficiencies in Children: When, Where, and Why
Introduction
A main conclusion that has emerged from research on children's memory is that strategies help memory. Older children more frequently use strategies and have better recall than do younger children, and young children trained to use strategies recall better than untrained young children and sometimes as well as older children. Moreover, the acquisition of strategies, along with increased knowledge, metamemory, and functional capacity, is believed to account for much of the improvement in recall during development. However, several investigators have reported that when novice strategy users spontaneously produce appropriate strategies, these strategies may provide little or no benefit for their recall. In contrast, these strategies benefit older children. This age difference appears even when younger children overtly are as fully strategic as the older children. In other words, strategy effectiveness lags behind spontaneous strategy production. We have labeled this poor strategy effectiveness among novice strategic children a “utilization deficiency” (Miller, 1990, Miller and Harris, 1988) and have examined it systematically in a series of studies. The occurrence of this utilization deficiency suggests that the standard view of the role of strategies in memory development is incomplete and overly simplistic. The purpose of this chapter is to examine the notion of a utilization deficiency. First we will define and conceptualize the phenomenon. Next we will examine the relevant research from our laboratory and that of others in order to determine the prevalence and boundary conditions of the utilization deficiency. Then we will outline and evaluate possible causes of the phenomenon. Finally we will identify issues for future research and note some broader implications of research on utilization deficiencies for the research enterprise.
Section snippets
Utilization Deficiency: Definition and Conceptualization
Although strategies have been defined in various ways, a common definition is a deliberate, goal-directed behavior that is intended to improve performance (Bjorklund, 1990). A utilization deficiency occurs when a child spontaneously produces an appropriate strategy but accrues no benefit from it for recall or less benefit than does an equally strategic older child. In some cases, producing the strategy may even decrease a child's recall temporarily. A utilization deficiency occurs during the
Evidence for the Existence of Utilization Deficiencies
We present three relevant literatures. The first two, from our laboratory and that of David Bjorklund, have directly and systematically examined the utilization deficiency. The third includes studies, by a number of different investigators, in which the phenomenon was examined incidentally. These three literatures include a variety of strategies, memory tasks, and ages.
Causes of the Utilization Deficiency
We can ask two perplexing questions about the utilization deficiency: Why does an appropriate strategy not help novice strategy producers (and why does it eventually help them)? Why do children continue to use an effortful strategy that provides little or no help for their recall? Five possible causes of the utilization deficiency suggest plausible answers to these questions. The first four (capacity, knowledge, linking strategies, inhibiting earlier behavior) are relevant primarily to the
DEVELOPMENT OR INCREASED EXPERTISE?
One important question is whether a utilization deficiency is a developmental or a degree-of-expertise phenomenon. We suspect that the answer is both. The fact that utilization deficiencies have emerged at different ages on various tasks suggests that domain-specific or strategy-specific expertise or both may be the main factor. The documented influence of automaticity of strategy production and of knowledge is also consistent with expertise effects. If expertise is important, a given child
Broader Implications: Research Biases
Why have utilization deficiencies rarely been reported or given serious attention until recently? To answer this question we must turn to philosophers and sociologists of science. They argue that investigators in a particular area of research typically share a set of assumptions about the nature of the phenomenon studied. These assumptions lead researchers to ask certain questions of their data and not to ask certain other questions. Consequently, they analyze their data in certain ways, and
Summary and Conclusions
By the early 1980s, a clear picture of the role of strategies in memory development was emerging. Strategies generally help recall and thus are a main contributor to memory development. Young children have a production deficiency that is overcome during the grade school years. By the early 1990s, the process appeared to be a good deal more complex. Although spontaneously produced strategies often help recall, they do not inevitably do so, especially among novice strategy producers—even when
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We thank Darlene DeMarie-Dreblow, Bridget Franks, and Scott Miller for their comments on an earlier draft. Most of the research by Miller and her colleagues was supported by National Science Foundation grant #BNS-8710264 and a University of Florida Research Development Award to Patricia Miller. Wendy Seier was supported by a National Institute of Child Health and Human Development research training grant #T32 HD07318.
REFERENCES (143)
- et al.
The use of the cumulative rehearsal strategy: A developmental study
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology
(1976) Memory and rehearsal characteristics of profoundly deaf children
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology
(1984)- et al.
Acquiring a mnemonic: Age and category effects
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology
(1988)- et al.
The adaptive nature of cognitive immaturity
American Psychologist
(1992) - et al.
The resources construct in cognitive development: Diverse sources of evidence and a theory of inefficient inhibition
Developmental Review
(1990) - et al.
Associative and categorical processes in children's memory: The role of automaticity in the development of organization in free recall
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology
(1985) - et al.
The role of knowledge in the development of strategies
- et al.
Output-interference theory of dual-task deficits in memory development
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology
(1989)
Two developmental transitions in selective remembering strategies
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology
Short-term memory differences between children predict imagery effects when sentences are read
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology
Intellectual development: Birth to adulthood
Age differences in memory span
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology
Age and verbalization in observational learning
Developmental Psychology
The rise and fall the inhibitory mechanism: Toward a unified theory of cognitive development and aging
Developmental Review
The effect of make-believe play on deductive reasoning
British Journal of Developmental Psychology
The influence of the imagination on reasoning by young children
British Journal of Developmental Psychology
Use of causal attributions about recall performance to assess metamemory and predict strategic memory behavior in young children
Developmental Psychology
Spontaneous verbal rehearsal in a memory task as a function of age
Child Development
Auditory short-term memory: Developmental changes in rehearsal
Child Development
Developmental analysis of memory capacity and information-encoding strategy
Developmental Psychology
An electromyrographical study of subvocal speech and recall in preschool children
Developmental Psychology
Strategic and nonstrategic factors in gifted children's free recall
Contemporary Educational Psychology
The emergence of strategic knowledge activation in categorical clustering during retrieval
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology
Resource panacea? Or just another day in the developmental forest
Developmental Review
Developmental changes in judgments of relative strategy effectiveness
British Journal of Developmental Psychology
An ontogeny of mediational deficiency
Child Development
A developmental study of intelligent retrieval
Child Development
Developmental changes in recall and recognition of complex material
Perceptual and Motor Skills
Preschoolers' strategies of attention on a same-different task
Developmental Psychology
Children's strategies for gathering information in three tasks
Child Development
Organization during study: Relationships between metamemory, strategy use, and performance
Journal of Educational Psychology
The development of the distinction between perceiving and memorizing
Child Development
Effects of spatial arrangement on 4- and 6-yr-old children's memory
Perceptual and Motor Skills
The expression of memorization in early childhood
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology
Children's generation and communication of mnemonic organizational strategies
Developmental Psychology
Developmental relationships among metamemory, elaborative strategy use, and associative memory
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology
Organization versus item effects of an elaborated knowledge base on children's memory
Developmental Psychology
Developmental differences in the acquisition and maintenance of an organizational strategy: Evidence for the utilization deficiency hypothesis
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology
Developmental differences in mental effort requirements for the use of an organizational strategy in free recall
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology
Training and extension of a memory strategy: Evidence for utilization deficiencies in the acquisition of an organizational strategy in high- and low-IQ children
Child Development
Children's organization and metamemory awareness in their recall familiar information
Child Development
Memory limitations in the oral reading comprehension of fourth grade children
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology
Selective remembering during adolescence
Developmental Psychology
Organization in visual episodic memory: Relationships between verbalized knowledge, strategy use, and performance
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology
Knowledge structures and memory development
Cited by (151)
Cognitive development
2023, Encyclopedia of Mental Health, Third Edition: Volume 1-3Promoting future-oriented thought in an academic context
2022, Cognitive DevelopmentHierarchical multinomial modeling to explain individual differences in children's clustering in free recall
2020, Journal of Mathematical PsychologyThe role of goal cueing in kindergarteners’ working memory
2019, Journal of Experimental Child PsychologyPut your hands up! Gesturing improves preschoolers’ executive function
2018, Journal of Experimental Child PsychologyLearning analytics to unveil learning strategies in a flipped classroom
2017, Internet and Higher Education