Research Paper on The Developmental Strategic Changes in Children’s Memory and the Utilization Deficiency Phenomenon

The current paper is focused on the problem of the development of organisational strategies in children’s, its effect on children’s memory and recall abilities as well as the role of the utilization deficiency phenomenon. The main points the paper attempts to reveal are the strategy acquisition is rather rapid transition from non-strategic to strategic and not a gradual one. Furthermore, the acquisition of new strategies should be accompanied with the understanding of the task and knowledge about its use, as well as children understanding of its importance is also extremely significant. As for the memory performance it is much more effective if multiple strategies are used. Finally, the problem of the utilization deficiency mainly results from a transitional capacity problem.

Introduction

The problem of developmental changes in children’s memory has been always particularly important and there are numerous researches dedicated to this problem. The problem is really important and noteworthy since traditionally it is believed that the acquisition of new strategies and their use occurs gradually but in recent years this statement is often criticised. This is why it is necessary to find out what statement is objectively likely to be more persuasive. Furthermore, it is necessary to find out what organisational strategies are more effective in order to apply certain strategies more effectively in practice so that children could develop their memory and cognitive skills more effectively, faster and easier.

Another important point is the utilization deficiency phenomenon that is also currently researched over and over again and still there is no definite conclusion as for whether this phenomenon is really widely spread and influential among children as well as what factors contribute to the development of the utilization deficiency.

Obviously, all these problems and questions need a clear response and justification and the main goal of this paper is to find out the best solution of the problems raised.

The key points in the development of organizational changes in children’s memory

Speaking about the development of organizational changes in children’s memory, it is necessary to point out that many researches dedicated to this problem traditionally resulted in the conclusion that the transition from non-strategic thinking to strategic and eventually the wider use of acquired strategies is a gradual process that is marked by gradual acquisition of new strategies, their use and perfection. At this respect, the research held by Matthias Schlagmuller and Wolfgang Schneider are quite contrasting to the traditional views on this problem.

In their article “The Development of Organizational Strategies in Children: Evidence from a Microgenetic Longitudinal Study”, Matthias Schlagmuller and Wolfgang Schneider present their study and the results of their research which may be surprising to the conservative part of the researchers dealing with the problem of the development of strategic memory in children.

First of all, it should be said that their main aim was to trace the developmental changes that occur in three groups of children from non-strategic to strategic memory behaviour. The researchers had three different groups of children, including a non-strategic group, a transitional group and strategic group, which possessed certain organizational strategies. However, it should be pointed out that the formation of the group was quite arguable since among 15 third-graders there were 11 girls and only four boys that makes the group lacking heterogeneity that provoke certain doubts as for objectivity of the conclusions even though the researchers underlined the fact that the gender was not important in their research and did not influenced the results and conclusions made by the authors.

Nonetheless, it is an apparent disadvantage of the experiment. On the other hand, the division of children into three distinctive groups contributes to better understanding the degree of influence of different strategies use and the acquisition of certain experience in strategic thinking.

The results of the research are really thought provoking. Notably, Schlagmuller and Schneider found out that the transitional group, which initially was in a less favourable position than strategy users group, managed to catch the latter up that naturally led the authors of the article to the conclusion that the strategy acquisition process is rather rapid and sudden than gradual as it was supposed before. In fact this is the main conclusion made by the researchers.

Nonetheless, they also found a number of other quite interesting facts. For instance, they indicate at the fact that the strategy use affects directly recall. Notably, they found out that sorting seems to be more important in this process than clustering, which, being widely used by children in the groups, turned to be less effective than sorting, which was quite rare. At the same time, Schlagmuller and Schneider came to the conclusion that their transitional group children did not support utilization phenomenon hypothesis but at this point they may be criticised, and some specialist, such as Veronica Kron, Michael Hunnerkopf, and Kristin Krajewski, indicate at the strict interpretation of the notion of the utilization deficiency by the researchers that will be discussed later in this article. Anyway, it should be said that the conclusions made on the basis of differences in interpretation of certain notions seem to be doubtful.

Finally, speaking about the research of Schlagmuller and Schneider, it is necessary to point out that it is really important to understand that the organizational strategy use must be accompanied by children’s understanding of the necessity to use it on the basis of task-specific knowledge acquired in the process of their study, or work. And it is really difficult to argue with the researchers’ idea of use of multiple strategies in order to achieve possibly better results in memory performance.

The utilization deficiency phenomenon

The research of Schlagmuller and Schneider, being dedicated to a very serious problem, still may be criticised and one of the points the most submitted to criticism is their view on the utilization deficiency phenomenon, which they believed to be not very significant, especially for their transitional group. At this respect the further study held by Veronika Kron, Michael Hunnerkopf, and Kristin Krajewski are very important. By the way, it should be pointed out that Wolfgang Schneider also participated in the research as a corresponding author. The research and its results were presented by the authors in the article “The development of young children’s memory strategies: First findings from the Wurzburg Longitudinal Memory Study”.

Generally speaking this article and the research at large basically supports the views and conclusions of Schlagmuller and Schneider made in the previous research and this is the problem of the article because it seems to be too focused on the latter research. Nonetheless, a remarkable difference of the recent study is the number of participants increased and was presented by practically equal number of boys and girls, to put it more precisely there were 47 boys and 55 girls, who were tested individually.

Their research, in general aimed at similar problems as the one discussed in the previous chapter, but their results should be discussed separately. In fact, the research basically agrees with many points of the research held by Schlagmuller and Schneider. Notably, the authors of the article agree with one of the key ideas of the previous research that, despite the fact that strategy development suggest linear progress in strategy use, in longitudinal terms it is really turn to be a rapid transition from non-strategic to strategic thinking. Also the researchers agree with the higher effectiveness of the multiple strategy use that can be generalised in different tasks.

However, there is a significant difference in the researches concerning the interpretation of the utilization deficiency phenomenon and its role. In fact, the article criticises Schlagmuller and Schneider’s research at this respect and underlines that the latter used quite a strict definition of the utilization deficiency, according to which deficiency was interpreted as a failure to gain from strategy use and this is why the results of the previous research showed that this phenomenon was not important and not supported by the transitional group. Even though the authors of the article admit that the role of the utilization deficiency phenomenon should not be so exaggerated as before but it is still quite important. The researchers interpret the notion of deficiency in a larger sense and in such interpretation it turns out that it is not only a transitional capacity problem but also deficiency may also result from low memory capacity. At the same time, they believe that this problem may be solved with the help of repeated strategy experience but, unfortunately, the authors do not provide further research of this side of the problem that naturally deprived the study at large of certain degree of persuasiveness.

Nonetheless, the article is quite helpful in better understanding of the previous research and the problem of the utilization deficiency phenomenon which interpretation by the authors is something in between the traditional view on the problem and the view of Schlagmuller and Schneider discussed above.

Conclusion

Thus, in conclusion it is possible to say that the research of developmental strategic changes in children’s memory and the role of the utilization of deficiency phenomenon is very important and has to be continued since neither of the researchers discussed provide persuasive argument in favour of one of the positions taken by their authors. Nonetheless, it is still possible to estimate that the utilization deficiency phenomenon is quite important though its role should not be overestimated. Furthermore, strategy development and strategy use is rather rapid, sudden process than a gradual transition from non-strategic to strategic thinking. Finally, it should be underlined that it is necessary to use variety of strategies in order to achieve possibly better results in children’s strategic memory behaviour.

Bibliography:

• Schlagmuller, Matthias and Wolfgang Schneider “The Development of Organizational Strategies in Children: Evidence from a Microgenetic Longitudinal Study”, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, Volume 81, Issue 3, March 2002, p.298-319
• Schneider, Wolfgang, Veronika Kron, Michael Hunnerkopf and Kristin Krajewski. “The development of young children’s memory strategies: First findings from the Wurzburg Longitudinal Memory Study”, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, Volume 88, Issue 2, June 2004, p.193-209
• Waters, H. S. “Memory strategy development: Do we need yet another deficiency?” Child Development, 71, 2000, p.1004–1012