Development of knowledge about the use of cues to aid prospective retrieval.

Retrieval cues can be used to help one remember to perform tasks in the future and to relocate objects in the environment. However, in both tasks there are requirements for a retrieval cue to be effective as a mnemonic aid. For example, the cue must be associated with the target item, but it must not be ambiguous, and it must be appropriately placed. 2 studies assessed children's ability to evaluate the communicative quality of retrieval cues. In Study 1, 5-9-year-old children and adults evaluated the potential effectiveness of cues to remind themselves. In Study 2, 4-9-year-olds evaluated the potential effectiveness of cues for relocating hidden objects. Patterns of results were similar in both studies: young children first learned that the retrieval cue should be associated with the target and should be encountered for retrieval to occur. However, children often overlooked problems with the potential informativeness of the cues, such as ambiguity, and did not anticipate that such cues might be misinterpreted in the future. Children's difficulty in estimating their information needs may be related to their difficulty in monitoring their current comprehension state.