Semantic integration in children's recognition of narrative versus scrambled sequences

Abstract

Second-grade and fourth-grade subjects were required to listen to a congruent or scrambled story, followed by a recognition test of the sentences included in the story. The importance of information included in the story had previously been rated by college students. Older children were found to recognize the information more accurately than younger children. Both second and fourth graders performed better in the congruent condition than in the scrambled one. No difference was found between recognition accuracy for important and for unimportant information. The results supported previous findings for the age effect and the type of story. The lack of significant effects involving the type of information may have resulted from the lack of sensitivity of the indicator of importance used.