The purpose of this study was to investigate the extent to which secondary memory development constrains the development of working memory in children. Secondary memory was investigated in this study in the context of a free recall task. In free recall, participants are presented with a list of items to remember that is beyond their 'span', and are asked to recall as many of the items as they can in whatever order they wish. Some accounts assume that participants commence free recall by first recalling the just-presented items from the end of the list that are held in 'primary memory', and then moving on to recall other items from secondary memory. In this experiment we built on a previous methodology used by Dalezman (1976) [Dalezman, J. J. (1976). Effects of output order on immediate, delayed, and final recall performance. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory, 2, 597-608. doi: 10.1037/0278-7393.2.5.597] and presented children with lists of 9 to-be-remembered words that were divided into two sub-lists by a change in presentation context towards the end of the list (either the last 4, 3, or 2 items in the list were presented in the changed context). Participants knew in advance that they should first recall items from the second context (potentially from 'primary memory') before moving on to then recall items from the first context (potentially from 'secondary memory'). This experiment was conducted with 61 pupils in UK School Year 1 and 36 pupils in UK School Year 3. These data underpin Experiment 2 of the paper available as an open access publication (see Related Resources). The data are also available via the University of Bristol data repository (see Related Resources). This data collection contains data from the third of four studies conducted on the associated ESRC grant (under Related Resources). The aim of this project is to build on previous psychological research with both children and adults to provide the most comprehensive model to date of the factors involved in the development of working memory performance in children. In doing so, the project will investigate the extent to which these factors are separable or inter-related. Also the project will assess how these factors contribute to mediating the strong relationships commonly observed between working memory and academic attainment. The research has four specific objectives: To determine whether age-related changes in short-term memory capacity are related to working memory development. To determine how age-related changes in processing speed are related to working memory development. To determine whether age-related changes in long-term memory utilisation are related to working memory development. To determine which of the above factors mediate the relationship between working memory performance and educational attainment. These objectives will be met in a set of empirical studies, using both existing and novel experimental measures. These measures will be related to academic attainment and measures of classroom behaviour.  Each study will involve large samples of children in two age groups (around 5 and around 9 years of age).

This study used an empirical, experimental data collection method. The experimental task was programmed using Runtime Revolution software and presented on a MacBook computer. Stimuli were drawn from a pool of 315 concrete nouns. Care was taken to ensure that the words employed would be familiar to all participants and the words had a mean 'objective age of acquisition rating' of 42.3 months (SD = 13.7) with a maximum value of 70.8 months. Approximately one-third of items were two-syllable words and two-thirds were one-syllable items. Stimuli were presented both auditorily and pictorially, with the pictures being in the form of black-on-white line drawings. Audio recordings were in a single male voice, presented via the laptop speakers, and all recordings were 750 ms in duration. Participants were assessed individually in a school setting in a single session lasting approximately 20 minutes. Details of the experimental task are given in the attached 'methodology' file. The sample consisted of 61 Year 1 pupils (29 males) and 36 Year 3 pupils (20 males) drawn from mainstream schools with close to national average levels of attainment. The mean age of the Year 1 group was 6:05 (years:months, range = 5:11 – 6:10), and the mean age of the Year 3 group was 8:05 (range = 7:10 – 8:10).