The effects of category distinctiveness and stimulus relations on young children's use of retrieval clustering strategies.

The influence of category distinctiveness and the associative relatedness of within-category items on young children's use of an organizational clustering strategy at retrieval was examined. Children from preschool and Grades 1 and 3 studied and recalled 9-item sets of pictured items representing either distinctive categories (e.g., numbers, letters, animals) or standard categories (e.g., furniture, clothing, animals). Half of the children at each grade level and in each category-type condition received category exemplars that were high associates. The results showed that each of the grade levels exhibited above-chance clustering for the distinctive categories but not for the standard categories. However, preschool participants attained above-chance clustering only for high-associate items, suggesting that their retrieval may have been driven automatically by natural word associations inherent in the stimuli. For older participants, above-chance clustering obtained for the low-associate as well as for the high-associate items, suggesting that they may have engaged in strategic retrieval activity.