Teaching awareness of strategic behavior in combination with strategy training: effects on children's memory performance.

The present study examined the effectiveness of two components (rehearsal training and strategy awareness) of an instructional package designed to train the developmentally young in the use of mature information processing techniques. Two groups of children of equivalent developmental age (MA = 8), one mildly retarded and the other of average intelligence, participated. Rehearsal training was effective in improving recall scores on the training task; however, neither rehearsal training, memory awareness, nor their combination significantly altered memory performance on the generalization tasks. There was evidence, however, that the combination of rehearsal training and strategy awareness did increase the likelihood of strategy transfer on the generalization task (recognition) which most closely resembled the training task. Post-task questioning revealed that instructions concerning memory awareness did improve subjects ability to verbalize appropriate strategic behavior: however, these improvements were not consistently translated into either actual use of a rehearsal strategy or improved performance. Discussion centered on the implications of these fesults and on the need for increased research on the metamnemonic skills involved in strategy generalization.