title: Effects of delays on 6-year-old children's self-generation and retention of knowledge through integration.
abstract: The current research was an investigation of the effect of delay on self-generation and retention of knowledge derived through integration by 6-year-old children. Children were presented with novel facts from passages read aloud to them (i.e., "stem" facts) and tested for self-generation of new knowledge through integration of the facts. In Experiment 1, children integrated the stem facts at Session 1 and retained the self-generated memory traces over 1 week. In Experiment 2, 1-week delays were imposed either between the to-be-integrated facts (between-stem delay) or after the stem facts but before the test (before-test delay). Integration performance was diminished in both conditions. Moreover, memory for individual stem facts was lower in Experiment 2 than in Experiment 1, suggesting that self-generation through integration promoted memory for explicitly taught information. The results indicate the importance of tests for promoting self-generation through integration as well as for retaining newly self-generated and explicitly taught information.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322, USA. nvarga@emory.edu
authors.forename: Nicole L
authors.initials: NL
authors.lastname: Varga
authors.forename: Patricia J
authors.initials: PJ
authors.lastname: Bauer
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007858:Learning; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory; D012153:Retention, Psychology; D012660:Semantics; D013997:Time Factors
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