Factors Influencing Utilization Deficiencies in Children`s Memory Performance

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Children´s memory strategy development has been intensively investigated during the past three decades. Although the date base seems rich, there is still debate about the natural course of strategy development. Classic studies in the field have emphasized the importance of "production deficiencies", that is, young children´s failure to produce spontaneously a strategy they have available, which, when prompted, leads to improved task performance. More recent work has illustrated the relevance of so-called "utilization deficiencies", that is, young children´s spontaneous use of a strategy with little or no corresponding improvement in task performance. Our project is devoted to the analysis of factors influencing young children´s utilization deficiencies and the clarification of relationships between production deficiencies on the one hand and utilization deficiencies on the other hand. Two experiments were designed that aim at overcoming the controversies related to the utilization deficiency concept. They test the assumption that utilization deficiencies on sort-recall memory tasks will be influenced by the age of the children, the difficulty of the task, and the strategy or strategies that are used to infer a utilization deficiency.