Two developmental transitions in selective remembering strategies

Two experiments were reported investigating developmental changes in the use of strategies to eliminate interference from irrelevant information in memory. The participants in the first were 7-, 9-, and 11-year-old children and those in the second were adults. In both experiments a directed forgetting paradigm was used in which the person was presented two sets of pictures but only recalled one set on a trial. On some trials there was a cue to forget the first set and to remember only the second set. There were two developmental transitions. The first was from ineffective to effective selective remembering which occurred between 7 and 11 years of age. The second, which occurred between 11 years of age and adulthood, was from the use of selective retrieval strategy to a more sophisticated rehearsal strategy. The implications of these two developmental transitions were discussed.