Short-term memory differences between children predict imagery effects when sentences are read.

Children in Grades 4 through 6 read concrete sentences that they were asked to learn. Half the subjects were instructed to construct images representing the sentence meanings. The remaining participants were provided no strategy instructions (control condition). Individual differences in short-term memory were more highly associated with performance in the imagery than in the control condition. There was a clear positive effect of imagery instructions on learning efficiency among students with relatively greater short-term memory; there was no difference in learning efficiency between the imagery and control conditions among students below the median for short-term memory performance. All relevant analyses supported the conclusion that imaginal coding of sentences that are read is demanding of short-term memory capacity.