Developmental Trends in the Abstraction and Recall of Relevant versus Irrelevant Thematic Information from Connected Verbal Materials.

CHRISTIE, DANIEL J., and SCHUMACHER, GARY M. Developmental Trends in the Abstraction and Recall of Relevant versus Irrelevant Thematic Information from Connected Verbal Materials. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1975, 46, 598-602. Children from kindergarten, second, and fifth grade were presented verbally a passage containing an equal number of idea units which were relevant versus irrelevant to the main theme of a story. For all grade levels, relevant idea units were recalled to a greater extent than idea units irrelevant to the main theme. In addition, when recalling the passage, children tended to preserve the originally presented order of relevant idea units to a greater extent than irrelevant idea units. Results are discussed in light of Soviet research findings and the theoretical formulations of Piaget and Werner.