Semantics, Phrase Structure and Age as Variables in Sentence Recall.

VANEVERY, HAROLYN, and ROSENBERG, SHELDON. Semantics, Phrase Structure, and Age as Variables in Sentence Recall. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1970, 41, 853-859. 40 first-grade and 40 seventh-grade Ss were administered 4 study-test trials on lists of 4 sentences. Half the Ss at each age level were given semantically well-integrated (SWI) sentences to learn, while the other half were given semantically poorly integrated (SPI) sentences. The sentences were constructed with the assistance of college associative sentence norms. For all measures of recall, the SWI sentences were recalled better than the SPI sentences regardless of age. In addition, the words in SWI sentences were recoded into larger chunks for storage than the words in SPI sentences, and age tended to increase chunking for both SWI and SPI sentences. As anticipated, the only evidence for phrase chunking was found in the seventh-grade Ss who were exposed to SPI sentences.