Method Participants Thirteen Parents (mean age = 35;6 years, SD = 3;4 years, age
ID: 3447054 • Letter: M
Question
Method Participants
Thirteen Parents (mean age = 35;6 years, SD = 3;4 years, age range: 29–41 years, all females) and their 14 Children (one twin pair; mean age = 4;8 years, SD = 2 months, age range = 4;6–4;10 years, 10 females) from Budapest, Hungary participated in the study (one additional pair was excluded due to the child’s refusal to participate during testing). Four-year-olds were chosen for this study because they were not yet reading (as confirmed by their parents) but had experience with verse. Thirteen university students from Eotv € os Lor € and University in Budapest participated in the Young Adult group (mean age = 25;10 years, SD = 4;2 years, age range: 21–33 years, 7 females), and received class credit. All participants were native Hungarian speakers. Sample sizes were determined by an a priori power analysis and were similar to Rubin et al. (1993). All experiments were conducted in accordance with the relevant ethical regulations, and the approval of the Ethical Committee of the Faculty of Education and Psychology, Eotv € os Lor € and University. Adults gave informed consent prior to participation; children, assent. Materials Our verse was a short, 167-word, rhyming (AABB rhyme scheme) poem, ‘The Radish-nosed King’ by Aliz Mosonyi (see Supplementary Materials). We chose this poem because, while suitable for 3–5-year-old children, it has a varied, interesting vocabulary, verse structure, and content that makes it engaging for adults as well. The verse was novel to all participants. We also tested participants with a ‘word list’ of eight unrelated words. This list was included as a measure of general attention and engagement. Four of these words were nonsense words that conformed to the phonological rules of Hungarian (irim, tentusz, kavu, bolum), and four were meaningful words selected from the 400 and 800 most frequent words in the Essex Children’s Printed Database (kalap [hat], ruha [dress], csonak [boat], tenger [sea]). We introduced this distinction to probe the contrast that Calvert and Billingsley (1998) reported in the verbatim recall of ‘Frere Jacques’ where English-only speaking children better recalled the ‘nonsense’ (French) version than the meaningful English ‘Brother John’ version. Critically, the word list was integrated with the verse but, by design, did not share in its rhythm and rhyme. Integration was achieved by adding a short introduction to indicate that the main character (the Radish-nosed King) spoke the words on the list. The word list either preceded or followed the verse (counterbalanced within groups). When it appeared before, the verse started with, ‘I will tell you a story about the Radish-nosed King who is a very peculiar fellow. When the King is angry, he shouts like this: {Kalap!, Irim!, Ruha!, Tentusz!, Csonak!, Kavu!, Tenger!, Bolum!}’; after the verse it read, ‘I’ve told you a story... .’ Procedure Parent–child protocol Parents were asked to read The Radish-nosed King (from a picturebook) as their 4-year-old’s bedtime story for ten consecutive nights. We chose this procedure because Reyna and Brainerd (1995) suggested that a greater opportunity to practice enhances recall of verbatim and content information even in young children. Parents were instructed to avoid discussing or reading the verse outside these readings. Parents were asked whether their child had interrupted the reading (e.g. with comments or questions). Only one mother reported that her child asked her to explain the word ‘ciganykerekeztek’ [do cartwheels]. (This is consistent with a pilot study using the same procedures, where videotaped recordings of the reading sessions showed no substantive interaction.) Importantly, parents were told that they would be tested at the end of the series of sessions, while children were not. Young adult protocol Young Adults received the instructions and test materials as an audio recording (recorded by a female reader, who used child-directed speech to mimic the recitation style of parents, and signaled when to turn the pages of the book). Young adults were asked to listen, and only listen, to the verse at bedtime for ten consecutive days, while looking at the pictures in the book (the text was excised), thus mimicking the experience of the child group. Young adults were given a written schedule, periodic reminders, and were asked to report any lapses in protocol (none were reported). Young Adults were told that they would be tested on their recall. Free-recall and gist tests On the day following the last session, a battery of tests was administered. First, all participants attempted a free-recall of the verse, verbatim, using just the original storybook’s illustrations as cues (please see Supplementary Materials © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd Preschoolers have better LTM for rhyming text than adults 3 of 8 for an example recording from a child participant). We used free-recall as this places greater demands on verbatim memory than recognition tests, and more efficiently assesses knowledge of surface structure, i.e. the full set of words, in sequence. These procedures are similar to those used in Rubin et al.’s (1993) work on memory for ballads, and parallel those of oral traditions in preliterate societies (Goody, 1998). During recall, if a participant paused for more than 3 seconds, or asked for help, they were prompted with the next word in the verse. (We introduced prompts since Beardsworth and Bishop (1994) found that children who were unable to recall averse after a 45-minute delay often showed dramatic improvements when given a single prompt.) Following verse recall, participants attempted to recall the word list. Prompts were not given during word list recall. Next, participants were asked about the gist (e.g. ‘What was the story about?’). If a participant failed to list the main characters and the three central events in the verse spontaneously, additional, open-ended questions were asked (e.g. ‘Who else was there?’, ‘What happened next?’). Afterwards, we administered the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (Dunn, 1959, Hungarian adaptation: Csanyi, 1976) to measure children’s verbal competence. Also, the socioeconomic status of parent–child pairs was assessed using a standard SES questionnaire. Results from these tests are reported in the Supplementary Materials. Scoring Verse recall reflects the number of correct words, in proper sequence, produced during free-recall, including articles. Correct word stems, but with the wrong case, were considered correctly recalled. We also calculated verse error, a sum of intrusion errors (erroneous words produced during recall) and confusion errors (paranyms, synonyms, and word or line order transpositions). List recall was analyzed separately, counting each correctly recalled word and nonsense word (maximum: 8). Gist recall was coded by determining the number of recalled main characters (out of 3: the Radish-nosed King, the radish children, and the mouse) and the number of correctly recalled main events (out of 3: the anger of the Radish-nosed King, the actions of the mouse, and the King’s forgiveness), as scored by six independent raters. Results Free-recall for the verse Children correctly recalled significantly more words, with significantly fewer errors, than both adult groups. First, the dependent variable of the mean number of correctly recalled words (verse recall) was analyzed, using an ANCOVA with between-subject grouping variables for group (Children, Parents, or Young Adult) and ‘list placement’ (list before, or after, verse). The number of prompts each participant received was used as a covariate. The analysis revealed no significant effect of list placement (F(1, 39) = 1.118, p = .298) so it was dropped from further analyses. The number of prompts did not play a significant role in recall performance (F(1, 39) = 0.513, p = .479) either. However, we found a significant main effect of group (F(2, 37) = 6.230, p = .005; g2 = 0.277). Post-hoc analyses revealed that Children recalled more words on average (mean verse recall: 117.4 words, SD = 30.7, out of the 167 total words in the verse) than Parents (mean verse recall: 87.2 words, SD = 38.6; t(25) = 2.284, p = .081, effect size r = 0.397) and Young Adults (mean verse recall: 70.3 words, SD = 34.5; t(25) = 3.831, p = .003, effect size r = 0.584 (see Figure 1). The difference in performance between the two adult groups was not significant (t(24) = 1.220, p = .606), and there was no significant interaction between the factors (F(2, 37) = 0.990, p = .381). All t-tests were two-tailed and Bonferroni corrected. Verse errors The number of inaccurately recalled words was compared using a univariate ANOVA (with group serving as a between-subject variable). Since Levene’s test of homogeneity of variance was significant (F(5, 34) = 7.113; p < .001), we used Welch’s ANOVA. This analysis yielded a significant effect of group (Welch d (2, 16) = 17.160, p = .0002; g2 = 0.360). Post-hoc analyses confirmed that Children made fewer errors (mean verse error: 7.6 words, SD = 7.94) during recall than Parents (mean verse error: 41.6 words, SD = 33.88; t(25) = 3.740, p = .009, effect size r = .599) and Young Adults (mean verse error: 54.9 words, SD = 35.23; t(25) = 5.00, p = .0002, effect size r = 0.707). There was no significant difference between parents and Young Adults (t(24) = 0.980, p = .697; see Figure 1). Potential differences in the pattern of error categories were analyzed using a repeated measures mixed-type ANOVA with the number of errors by error type (intrusion versus confusion) as within-subject variables and group as a between-subject variable. The main effect of group was significant (F(2, 37) = 10.330; p < .0001, g2 = 0.358), as was error type (F(1, 39) = 25.570; p < .0001, g2 = 0.409). In addition, there was a significant interaction between the two factors (F(2, 37) = 5.230, p = .01, g2 = 0.220). Post-hoc tests showed that © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd 4 of 8 Ildiko Kir aly et al. Children’s pattern of errors significantly differed from that of Parents (F(1, 25) = 13.960, p = .009, g2 = 0.358) and from the Young Adults’ (F(1, 24) = 23.315, p < .0001, g2 = 0.493): Children made relatively fewer intrusion errors (mean intrusion errors: 5.6, SD = 3.36; mean confusion errors = 2.0, SD = 1.8), in comparison to Parents (mean intrusion errors = 32, SD = 28.0; mean confusion errors = 9.6, SD = 10.6) and Young Adults (mean intrusion errors = 44, SD = 33.0; mean confusion errors = 10.9, SD = 8.8). A repeated measures ANOVA showed no significant difference in error patterns between the two adult groups (F(1, 24) < 1). In addition, we investigated sequencing errors alone. A one-way ANOVA showed no significant difference between the mean number of sequencing errors made by each group: F(2, 37) = 3.128, p = .056 (Children: mean = 1.28, SD = 1.2; Parents: mean = 3.23, SD = 3.05; Young Adults: mean = 1.76, SD = 1.58). Word list recall The three groups’ performance on the word list recall was statistically indistinguishable (see Figure 2). Data were analyzed using a univariate ANOVA, with betweensubject variables of group and list placement. There was no significant difference among the groups or list placement, and there was no significant interaction between factors (all Fs < 1; Children: mean = 5.71, SD = 1.64; Parents: mean = 6.00, SD = 1.73; Young Adults: mean = 5.85, SD = 1.63). We next examined the effect of meaningfulness on list recall. A repeated measures mixed-type ANOVA was conducted with meaningfulness (meaningful vs. nonsense words) as within-subject variables and group as a between-subject variable. (Since there had been no effect of the list placement, this factor was not used.) The main effect of group was not significant (F(2, 37) < 1; p = .906), nor was there a significant effect of meaningfulness on performance (F(1, 39) < 1; p = .396), but there was a significant interaction between the factors (F (2, 37) = 7.760, p = .002; g2 = 0.296). Post-hoc tests, however, did not find significant differences for word list types (meaningful vs. nonsense) between groups (Bonferroni-corrected t-tests, p = 1.00, for each comparison). Gist recall All three groups performed similarly for gist recall, with mean scores (out of 6) of 5.57 (SD = 0.852), 5.53 (SD = 0.77), and 5.85 (SD = 0.376) for Children, Parents, and Young Adults, respectively. The effect of group was not significant (F(2) < 1). Gist recall scores were not normally distributed (Kolgomorov-Smirnov test: 0.467, df = 40, p = .0001) and were effectively at ceiling, and so primarily confirm that there were no gross lapses in effort, retention, or adherence to our protocol. Effect of word position on verse recall We also looked at the relationship between verse recall and the position of a word within a line of the verse 0 15 30 45 60 75 90 105 120 135 150 165 0 15 30 45 60 75 90 105 120 135 150 165 167 words in verse Verse recall (number of correctly recalled words) Children Parents Y. Adults Verse Error (Intrusion and Confusion errors) Children Parents Y. Adults Figure 1 Verbatim, free-recall performance of rhyming verse; 4-year-olds versus adults. Mean verse recall (left panel) and verse error (right panel) is presented for each group. Verse error consists of intrusion errors (top, gray area of stacked bar) and confusion errors (black area). Solid error bars indicate standard errors; dotted, 95% confidence intervals. © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd Preschoolers have better LTM for rhyming text than adults 5 of 8 (Figure 3). All groups showed a trend for better recall of words that appear later in a line; a correlation that was especially pronounced, and significant, in Children (r = 0.91, p = .013; r = 0.45, p = .375; and r = 0.65, p = .161, for Children, Parents, and Young Adults, respectively). Discussion In this study, parents read a novel rhyming children’s poem as their 4-year-old’s bedtime story for ten consecutive days. A group of young adults passively listened to the same verse for ten consecutive nights, simulating children’s exposure. Following this, we measured participants’ verbatim free-recall. In contrast to results in other memory domains, children significantly outperformed both adult groups. When memory was tested on a random word list embedded in the verse, and for the gist of the verse, children and adults performed similarly; children’s verbatim memory advantage was for verse per se. Engagement during reading Given our own lapses in mindfulness, it is tempting to suppose that adult participants may have drifted into a distracted state while reading (parents) or listening (young adults), resulting in poorer encoding than the assumedly more engaged children. This is unlikely for a few reasons. To begin with, we specifically chose a verse that, while suitable for children, was short (~1.5 minutes to read out loud), complex, and entertaining enough to be of sustained interest to adults. It is worth remembering too that participants in both adult groups knew they were taking part in an experiment, and that they would be tested on their recall of the verse (children had no such knowledge); a salient motivator, especially for the young adult group of university students. During debriefing, we asked about lapses in engagement and none were reported. More directly though, we can look to the magnitude and ubiquity of the children’s advantage. This is no small effect: children remembered nearly twice as many words as adults did, with far fewer errors. This main effect finds confirmation both in a pilot study we ran that pitted 4-year-olds against their parents, and a recent follow-up with another (N = 10) Young Adult group (which only achieved a mean verse recall of 56 words; for further discussion, please see Supplementary Materials). To assess the ubiquity of this pattern, we ranked 50 participants (14 children and 26 adults from our main study plus the 10 from the follow-up) by verse recall, and found that the top three performers were exclusively 4-year-olds (with nearly all, 12 of 14, having above median performance) and the bottom 22 were exclusively adults.
Overall, what did participation in the study involve? (What did the participants have to do?)
How did the protocol differ for the parent-child dyads and the young adults?
Describe how free-recall and gist were measured?
How was the data scored?
What were the overall findings?
What interpretations did the authors provide for the findings (see: Engagement during reading in the Discussion section)?
How did the article suggest these findings could be used in an educational setting?
According to the article, what should future research explore?
Explanation / Answer
Participation involed reading a rhyme for ten consecutive nights. For parent-child group, parents would read the story to the child and for the young adults group, they listened to the story read by a recorded female reader. They were tested at the end of the ten days.
Participants were asked to free recall of the words and if they paused for few seconds, they were given prompts. For gist recall, there were asked to recall three main characters and three main events, if they were stuck, open ended questions were asked.
Free recall was scored by the count of correct words in proper sequence. Correct word stems with wrong case, were considered as correct recall. For gist recall, number of main character recall and no. Of main events recall out of 3 were coded. The data was scored using ANCOVA and ANOVA techniques.
Overall finding is that children have better free call memory compared to adults and they can recall twice as words than others.
Interpretations for the findings were that children were salient motivators and they recalled twice as better than others with fewer errors.
In educational settings, engaging content with prompts could be able to improve the memory and learning of the students.
Future research should explore to identify the reasons with decrease in the memory over time and how it can be enhanced.