Abstract:
When people are asked to recall words they have studied earlier from a list, those given a subset of these words as cues recall fewer words than people who do not receive any cues. This phenomenon is the so-called part-list cuing effect. Adopting the part-list cuing effect paradigm and the 2×4 two factors mixed experimental design(cuing, age), this research examined the developmental characteristics of part-list cuing effect. Participants learned a word list of 30 items, after that the participants of no part-list cuing condition were instructed to freely recall all the items, the part-list cuing condition were provided with a subset of 15 intra-list items and use them as retrieval cues for recalling the remaining items. The difference between cued condition and uncued condition showed the size of the effect. The findings show that: (1)The part-list cuing effect occurred in participants of all grades selected, that is to say, the providing of the part-list cues had an inhibiting effect on all ages;(2)Significant difference of participantsapos; memory reduction amount was found among the four groups of participants, the higher the grade, the more the memory reduction amount appear, and the part-list cuing effect had a great change from 10 to 14 years old.