effort, interest, and recall: beliefs and behaviors of preschoolers

JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL CHILD PSYCHOLOGY 65, 43–67 (1997)ARTICLE NO. CH962355

Effort, Interest, and Recall:Beliefs and Behaviors of Preschoolers

JULIA T. O’SULLIVAN

Memorial University of Newfoundland

Sixty preschoolers participated in two experimental sessions designed to measuretheir beliefs about the relations between effort, interest, and recall as well as theiractual effort deployment and recall under different interest levels. In Session 1, childrenmade paired-comparison judgments about the individual and combined effects of highversus low effort and high versus low interest on recall. In Session 2, the children’seffort deployment (behavior during study), recall, and attributions for recall in highversus low interest conditions were examined. Findings from Session 1 indicated thatthe children believed that recall increases with effort and with interest. They alsobelieved that interest influences the amount of effort expended during study such thathigh interest elicits high effort and leads to superior recall relative to a low interest-low effort combination. Findings from Session 2 indicated that these beliefs werequite naive; that is, interest level did influence the children’s effort deployment duringstudy but the effects were more complex than the children had predicted. Contrary tothe children’s beliefs, effort was not related to recall and recall was superior in thelow- not the high-interest condition. Consistent sex differences in beliefs, behavior,and recall performance were found. Compared with boys, most girls held naive beliefsabout effort and interest and this naivete was associated with strategic behavior andrecall performance advantages. The findings are discussed in terms of the importanceand limitations of preschoolers’ beliefs about memory. q 1997 Academic Press

Preschoolers have established beliefs about how the mind works on cogni-tive tasks. In their beliefs, preschoolers represent certain variables as havingparticularly powerful influences on cognitive performance (Miller & Aloise,1989; Wellman, 1983, 1988, 1990). Two of those variables are effort andinterest. How hard you try and how much you like a task are, according topreschoolers, major determinants of how well you perform (Miller, 1985;Miller & Aloise, 1989; O’Sullivan, 1993; Wellman, Collins, & Glieberman,

Preparation of this article was supported by Grant OGP0046514 from the Natural Sciencesand Engineering Research Council of Canada. I am grateful to all the children, parents, andpreschool teachers involved in this research and to Mark L. Howe for his helpful comments onthe manuscript. Address correspondence and reprint requests to Julia T. O’Sullivan, Faculty ofEducation, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada A1B 3X8.Fax: (709) 737-2345; e-mail: [email protected].

0022-0965/97 $25.00Copyright q 1997 by Academic Press

All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

43

AID JECP 2355 / ad08$$$$21 03-03-97 19:55:46 jecpal AP: JECP

44 JULIA T. O’SULLIVAN

1981). Because effort and interest seem so important in preschoolers’ emerg-ing beliefs about cognition, researchers need a thorough understanding ofthose beliefs, including how they influence and are influenced by preschoolers’cognitive behavior and performance. There are two issues in particular, notyet examined by researchers, that need to be addressed. First, what do pre-schoolers believe about the independent effects of effort and interest on cogni-tion and about how they combine to influence cognitive performance? Second,how realistic are preschoolers’ beliefs about effort, interest, and cognitiveperformance? That is, do effort and interest really influence each other, andinfluence performance, the way preschoolers believe they do? In the experi-ment reported here, both of these issues were addressed. That is, 4- and 5-year-olds’ beliefs about effort-interest-recall relations were measured andcompared with their actual mnemonic efforts and recall under differentialinterest levels. Before presenting the experiment, the research on young chil-dren’s beliefs about effort, interest, and memory will be summarized.

Consider effort first. What do preschoolers believe about mnemonic effort?Much of what is known has been inferred from preschoolers’ activities underinstructions to remember versus instructions to play. When instructed to re-member, preschoolers typically engage in a number of strategic memoryactivities, ones that occur more frequently than when children are instructedto play (e.g., Baker-Ward, Ornstein, & Holden, 1984; Deloache, Cassidy, &Brown, 1985; Lange, MacKinnon, & Nida, 1989; Newman, 1990). This hasbeen interpreted as evidence that preschoolers believe effort facilitates mem-ory and deliberately use effort to help themselves on memory tasks (Ornstein,Baker-Ward, & Naus, 1988; Wellman, 1988). When preschoolers’ beliefsabout effort and memory are measured directly, even 4-year-olds believe thatincreased effort will lead to increased recall (O’Sullivan, 1993). Five-year-olds judge that trying harder is one of the most effective things one can doto remember and they believe that effort influences recall more than amountto-be-remembered (Wellman et al., 1981). Overall, findings from both indirectand direct studies of preschoolers’ beliefs converge on the conclusion thatthey believe effort is important for successful memory and that increases ineffort will produce performance gains on memory tasks.

How realistic are preschoolers’ beliefs about mnemonic effort? For exam-ple, do increases in preschoolers’ effort really produce the performance gainsthat they expect? Few studies exist where the realism of preschoolers’ beliefsabout mnemonic effort was determined directly. One exception was reportedby O’Sullivan (1993), who measured 4-year-olds’ beliefs about relations be-tween effort, anticipated reward, and recall and compared those beliefs witheffort deployment (study time and study strategies) and recall under differen-tial reward value conditions. The 4-year-olds believed that the value of ananticipated reward would influence effort expenditure on a recall task and itdid. Children who were promised a good reward looked at and maintainedattention to the stimuli more than those promised a poorer reward. The chil-dren also believed that these extra mnemonic efforts would produce increased


45EFFORT, INTEREST, AND RECALL

recall but they did not. Thus, the 4-year-olds’ belief that reward would influ-ence effort turned out to be realistic, but their belief that effort would impacton recall turned out to be naive. Indeed, there is growing evidence that,contrary to their belief that effort facilitates performance, preschoolers oftendeploy their efforts into either faulty (inappropriate or incomplete) or ineffec-tive (utilization deficient) strategies that do not pay off for recall (Baker-Ward et al., 1984; Miller, 1990; Miller & Seier, 1994; Wellman, 1988).Furthermore, their belief in the value of effort may be so strong that it protectsthem from discovering that their efforts are not paying off and providescontinuing motivation to try hard on memory tasks (Bjorklund, Coyle, &Gaultney, 1992; Pressley, Borkowski, & Schneider, 1987).

Next, consider interest. Like effort, interest is an internal psychologicalvariable that preschoolers believe exerts a causal influence on memory. Moststudies on young children’s beliefs about interest have been reported by Millerand her associates. They have shown that preschoolers believe attention,comprehension, and memory increase with interest; that they establish beliefsabout the effects of interest before beliefs about the effects of many task andstrategy variables; that even 3-year-olds believe that interest is more influentialfor cognition than environmental variables like noise; and 4-year-olds believethat external variables like reward can enhance the effects of interest onmemory (Miller, 1982, 1985; Miller & Weiss, 1982; Miller & Zalenski, 1982).

How realistic are those beliefs? For example, does interest affect preschool-ers’ memory performance the way they believe it does? There are no publishedstudies where preschoolers’ beliefs about the influence of interest on memorywere directly compared with the actual effects of interest on their mnemonicbehavior or performance. Although the positive effects of interest on memoryare engrained in our ‘‘folk psychological beliefs’’ and are often taken forgranted in the developmental and education literatures, it would be a mistaketo conclude that this is indirect evidence for the realism of preschoolers’beliefs. This is because few studies exist where the effects of interest on anyaspect of preschoolers’ memory and cognition have been examined at all(Hidi, 1990). Furthermore, findings from the available research with eitherpreschoolers or older children suggest that the role of interest in cognition isconsiderably more complex than that represented in folk beliefs (Hidi, 1995;Renninger, Hidi, & Krapp, 1992).

Kropp (1983) found that, following a 24-hour retention interval, 4-year-olds demonstrated superior recall for less interesting compared with moreinteresting stories. Similarly, Oyen and Bebko (1996) reported that 4- to 7-year-olds recalled less when a memory task (serial recall of unrelated commonobjects) was presented in the context of an interesting computer game com-pared with the traditional task presentation used in memory research. Incontrast, Renninger and Wozniak (1985) measured individual children’s spe-cific toy interest and demonstrated positive effects of individual interest on2-, 3-, and 4-year-olds’ attention, recognition, and immediate recall of toys.In that study, interest was conceptualized as involving both the individual



child’s prior knowledge about, and the value that child placed on, given tasksor items. According to that conceptualization, which has since received wideacceptance in the literature, knowledge and interest should be strongly andpositively correlated. However, significant knowledge–interest correlationshave not been demonstrated for young children and when Schneider andBjorklund (1992) assessed the contributions of knowledge and interest (asmeasured by two items on a questionnaire) to 7- and 9-year-olds’ memory,they found no independent effect of interest.

Perhaps there are different types of interest that, when not controlled for,are contributing to these equivocal findings (Hidi, 1990). Hidi and Baird(1988) distinguished between individual interests (enduring characteristicsthat involve both knowledge and value) and situational interests that areevoked by the environment (that are transient and unrelated to knowledgeand value). Situational interest, in particular text-based interest, has beenassociated with positive effects on young school-age children’s attention,comprehension, and memory (Anderson, Mason, & Shirey, 1984; Garner,Alexander, Gillingham, Kulikowich, & Brown, 1991; Renninger et al., 1992).However, it is not clear if the effect of text-based interest on memory is director mediated by attention (Anderson et al., 1984; Hidi, 1990, 1995; Shirey &Reynolds, 1988). Furthermore, Sadoski, Goetz, and Fritz (1993) argued thatin many of these studies, text-based interest was confounded with concretenessand contributed no independent effect to cognition. All in all then, giventhe relatively limited number of studies to date, coupled with the differentconceptualizations and measures of interest used, it is perhaps not surprisingthat the effects of interest on children’s memory have not been clearly anddirectly established. The important point for the present study is that pre-schoolers’ beliefs about the effects of interest are just that—beliefs, with asyet little solid empirical foundation to them. Indeed, it may be that preschool-ers hold some naive beliefs about interest just as they do about effort.

It is clear from the literature reviewed to this point that researchers haveexamined preschoolers’ beliefs about effort independent of their beliefs aboutinterest and that establishing the realism of those beliefs has not been aparticular concern. However, this empirical approach has not provided a goodtest of conceptual models of children’s beliefs (e.g., Wellman, 1983, 1990).According to those models, what preschoolers represent in their beliefs arethe actions of and interactions between effort, interest, and performance, andnot the independent and isolated actions of effort and interest. Consequently,we need to investigate preschoolers’ beliefs about how effort and interestinfluence each other and about how they can combine to influence memoryperformance. Second, this empirical approach has not allowed us to speakauthoritatively about relations between preschoolers’ beliefs and their strate-gic behavior. Indeed, without establishing the realism or naivete of thosebeliefs, our ability to understand how preschoolers construct their beliefs, andhow those beliefs influence and are influenced by their cognitive behaviorand performance, is somewhat constrained.



What might preschoolers believe about effort-interest-memory relations andhow realistic are those beliefs likely to be? Preschoolers have considerableexperience with effort and interest and these experiences should inform theirbeliefs about effort-interest-memory relations. Two types of experience seemto be particularly important (Miller & Aloise, 1989; O’Sullivan, 1993; Stipek &MacIver, 1989). First, interest and effort are both heavily involved in theeveryday situations and activities of preschoolers, affording them considerableopportunity to notice relations between these variables and their effects onsocial, athletic, and cognitive performance (Miller & Aloise, 1989). Second,parents and preschool teachers encourage children to believe (perhaps naively)that effort and interest have important influences on each other and on perfor-mance. In their language and behavior, these adults communicate their ownbelief that interest facilitates attention and persistence (i.e., effort), emphasizethat effort is the key to successful performance, and tend to evaluate preschool-ers’ work based not on outcome but on the amount of effort that went into it(O’Sullivan, 1993; Stipek & MacIver, 1989). For preschoolers, these differentexperiences likely inform each other (e.g., they apply what adults have toldthem when interpreting relations between their effort, interest, and performanceon everyday tasks) and from these experiences they construct their beliefs abouteffort and interest in the context of memory. Consequently, consistent withtheir experiences, preschoolers probably believe that both effort and interestexert facilitative effects on memory. They are also likely to believe that interestcan influence the amount of effort expended on memory tasks.

The belief that interest can influence mnemonic effort may be quite realistic.After all, there is evidence that individual interest influences attention andpersistence during preschoolers’ play (Renninger, 1990) and that situationaltext-based interest influences older children’s attention during reading (Ander-son et al., 1984; Hidi, 1990; Shirey & Reynolds, 1988). However, beliefsthat interest and effort (individually or combined) will enhance preschoolers’memory performance are likely naive. This is because the effects of intereston preschoolers’ memory are equivocal (Kropp, 1983; Renninger & Wozniak,1985) and because preschoolers often channel their efforts into strategic rou-tines that do not translate into performance gains (Baker-Ward et al., 1984;Lange et al., 1989; Newman, 1990; O’Sullivan, 1993).

Do preschoolers believe that effort is more important for memory thaninterest? Researchers have certainly painted a major role for beliefs abouteffort in the development of preschoolers’ strategic memory (Howe & O’Sulli-van, 1990; Ornstein et al., 1988; Pressley et al., 1987). In particular, theyhave stressed that preschoolers attribute their memory performance to theirefforts and that those attributions are critical for motivating continued effortwhich eventuates in the discovery of effective strategies (Bjorklund et al.,1992; Miller & Seier, 1994). If effort is so important in preschoolers’ beliefs,then they should judge that effort has more impact on recall than interest andattribute their memory performance to their efforts even when interest, avariable they believe exerts its own powerful effect on memory, is high.



In this study 4- and 5-year-olds’ beliefs about effort, interest, and recallwere examined and the realism of those beliefs determined. Children partici-pated in two experimental sessions, each of which will be presented separately.In Session 1, their beliefs about the effects of high and low effort and highand low interest on recall were measured. Then, their beliefs about how levelof interest (high vs low) would influence the amount of effort expended(high vs low) during study and about the effects of these interest–effortcombinations on recall were examined. It was predicted they would believethat recall increases with effort and interest and that high interest would elicithigh effort leading to superior recall relative to a low interest–low effortcombination. The realism of these beliefs was examined in Session 2. Here,children’s effort deployment (behavior during study), recall, and attributionsfor recall (either to effort or interest), in high- and low-interest conditionswere compared (interest was manipulated at the group level). It was expectedthat, consistent with their beliefs, interest would affect effort and childrenwould exhibit higher levels of certain behaviors (looking at and talking aboutthe toys) in the high- relative to the low-interest condition. However, thebelief that these additional efforts would translate into superior recall waspredicted to be naive (Baker-Ward et al., 1984; Lange et al., 1989; O’Sullivan,1993). Finally, the children were expected to attribute their performance totheir efforts, regardless of interest condition.

SESSION 1

Method

Sample

Sixty preschool children, 33 girls and 27 boys, participated. They rangedin age from 49 to 67 months, with a mean age of 56.8 months, SD Å 4.87months. The children were recruited from six preschools in St. John’s, New-foundland, serving low to upper income families. Their participation in theresearch was secured by written parental consent.

Materials

Two dolls, 50 cm in height, were used. The dolls were identical and weredesigned to be ambiguous with respect to sex. The dolls’ age and sex wereverbally matched to the age and sex of each individual child. The dolls hadno facial features. Two faces, drawn on cloth and backed with velcro, wereused to represent high and low effort. The face depicting high effort hadtightly knitted eyebrows and a sharply downturned mouth. The low-effortface had a slight knitting of the brows and downturning of the mouth. Asmall blue kimono embroidered with dragons, called a ‘‘happy coat,’’ wasused to represent interest. High interest was depicted by the doll wearing,and low interest by the doll not wearing, the happy coat. Two sets of 10small toys were used, with each set containing a watch, cow, balloon, cup,whistle, rubber man, shovel, airplane, box of crayons, and a pack of stickers.



Finally, two identical sets of counting cards were used. Each set contained10 cards, with each card representing a number from 1 to 10. On each card,both a numeral and the corresponding number of stars appeared.

Procedure

The children were seen individually, in a quiet room in the preschool, bya female experimenter. First, children were familiarized with the memorytask they would be making judgments about and with the counting cardsthey would use to make those judgments. Sitting together on the floor, theexperimenter told the children that she wanted to show them a memory gameand then find out what they thought about it. To demonstrate the game, shetook 10 toys out of a bag and placed them in a semicircle in front of thechildren. Then she explained how the game was played. She told the childrenthat she would leave the toys out for a short time and then she would putthem back in the bag. She said that while the toys were out the childrenshould try to remember them because, after she put them back into the bag,they would be asked to tell the experimenter all the toys they had been shown.The experimenter then said that before playing the game the children shouldcheck to see how many toys there were altogether, how many toys there wereto be remembered. The experimenter told the children that she had somecounting cards they could use to help count the toys. The experimenter pre-sented her counting cards and described how each card had a numeral writtenon it together with the corresponding number of stars. Then, the experimenterand the child went through all the cards and checked that, on each card, thenumeral matched the number of stars. Next, the experimenter told the childrenthat they would count the toys together. She asked the children to make apile with the toys, adding 1 toy at a time and counting out loud as each toywas placed. The experimenter said she would help by counting with the cards.The children then moved the toys one by one into a pile. As the childrencounted out loud, the experimenter laid the corresponding counting card faceup on the floor. When all the toys had been counted, the experimenter askedthe children how many toys there were to remember (all the children said10) and then she withdrew the cards.

At this point, 34 children (19 girls, 15 boys) were asked to try out thememory game and the remaining 26 (14 girls, 12 boys) received some addi-tional training with the counting cards. This additional training was introducedto ensure that the children understood and could express numerically thequantitative concepts of most and equal, thus eliminating the possibility thatlimitations in these aspects of quantitative knowledge might influence theirrecall predictions. The experimenter asked the children to pick up the cardwith 2 stars and she picked up the card with 8 stars for herself. The childrenwere asked who had the most stars and all answered correctly. Then, theexperimenter took the card with 3 stars and asked the children to pick a cardfor themselves so that they would have the most stars. All children picked acard with more than 3 stars. Finally, the experimenter took a card with 1 star



for herself, gave another card with 1 star to the children, and asked if anyonehad the most stars now or if both had the same number of stars. All thechildren said the same. With training complete, children then tried out thememory game.

The toys were exposed for 10 s and the children were told to try to remem-ber them. Then the toys were put into a bag and the children were asked totell the experimenter all the toys they had been shown. When the childrenfinished recall, the experimenter laid out the counting cards and asked thechildren to point to the card that showed how many toys they had recalled(all the children responded correctly). Next, the experimenter told the childrenthat she wanted to ask them about the game. At that point, children proceededto three trials designed to measure metamemory about effort, interest, andeffort–interest interactions. For half of the children the effort trial was pre-sented first, while the remaining half completed the interest trial first. Thetrial involving effort–interest interactions was always administered last.

1. Effort trial. The children were shown the two dolls, described as pre-schoolers the same age and sex as each participating child, and were told thatthey were playing the memory game that the children had played minutesbefore. The experimenter, pointing out that the dolls/preschoolers had nofaces, told the children she would put faces on. She took out the two clothfaces and put one on each doll. Pointing out the facial expression in each,she described one doll as trying a whole lot and the other as trying a littleto remember (counterbalanced for order). Then, as a manipulation check, thechildren were asked to identify the preschooler who was trying a lot and thepreschooler who was trying a little (counterbalanced for order). All the chil-dren made the correct identifications. Next, around each doll, the experimenterplaced both a set of 10 toys (identical with the toys the children had countedminutes before) and a set of 10 counting cards with the numeral/stars on eachcard visible. She asked the children to select the card that showed how manytoys the preschooler who was trying a lot and the preschooler who was tryinga little would remember (counterbalanced for order). When the children hadmade their selections the experimenter restated their predictions (e.g., the boywho is trying a lot will remember 7 toys, the boy who is trying a little willremember 5 toys). Then the faces were taken off the dolls.

2. Interest trial. Children’s estimates of recall in the different interestconditions were obtained using the same procedure. The experimenter pointedto the dolls, who on this trial had no faces, and said that two differentpreschoolers were now playing the memory game. The experimenter put thehappy coat on one doll and explained that it was called a happy coat. Thechildren were told that this preschooler was very interested in the memorygame and really liked it a lot. In fact, the preschooler loved it so much s/hewas wearing the happy coat. The other preschooler, who had no coat, wasdescribed as kind of interested in the game, only liking it a little and thereforehad no happy coat on. Then, the children were asked to identify the pre-schooler who loved the game and the preschooler who kind of liked it (all



the children made the correct identifications). Next, the children were askedto select the card that showed how many toys the preschooler who loved thegame and the preschooler who kind of liked it would remember (counterbal-anced for order). When the children had made their selections, the experi-menter restated their predictions.

3. Effort–interest trial. To measure children’s beliefs about how interestinfluences effort, the experimenter first put the happy coat on one doll andthen described each of the dolls’ interest levels again. Pointing out that thesepreschoolers had no facial features, she told the children that they should giveeach preschooler a face. Then, the effort faces were presented and describedand the children were asked to decide which face each preschooler should get.They were asked to judge which preschooler, the one who loved the game orthe one who kind of liked it, was trying a whole lot to remember and whichpreschooler was trying a little (counterbalanced for order). When the childrenhad put the faces on the dolls, the experimenter restated their choices (e.g., theboy who loves the game is trying a little to remember the toys, the boy whokind of likes the game is trying a whole lot to remember the toys). Then,pointing to the counting cards around each doll, she asked the children toestimate recall for each doll (i.e., each effort–interest pair they had constructed)and when the children had made their predictions, she restated them.

ResultsTwo questions were addressed in the analyses for Session 1. The first

concerned the number of children who made the different types of predictionson the effort, interest, and effort–interest trials (see Table 1). The secondquestion concerned the effects of manipulating the task variables (effort vsinterest vs both) and their magnitude (high vs low) on the number of itemsthe children predicted would be recalled. Preliminary analyses revealed effectsdue to sex but not to order (effort or interest first) or training (presence orabsence of training on most and same). Consequently, sex, but not order ortraining, was included in subsequent analyses.

EffortChildren’s predictions about the effects of effort on recall were classified

into three types. These were that high effort would produce more recall thanlow effort, that high effort would produce less recall than low effort, or thathigh and low effort would produce equal recall (see the first two rows inTable 1). x2 tests followed by z tests (normal approximation to the binomial;e.g., see Hays, 1988) were used to compare the frequencies of the three typesof predictions with chance. A chance response rate of 33% for each of thethree types of predictions (i.e., high ú low, high õ low, high Å low) wasadopted.1 There were significant deviations from chance in the distribution

1 An alternative method for calculating chance expectancies in these analyses is to base them,not on the number of types of prediction (3), but on the number of items (1–10) involved inthe prediction for each pair of dolls. For example, if a child predicts that recall in the high-effort



TABLE 1Percentage (Frequency in Parentheses) of Boys and Girls Making Each Type of Judgment

on the Effort, Interest, and Effort–Interest Trials

Recall predictions for effort and interest

High ú low High õ low High Å lowEffort

Girls 78.8 (26) 12.1 (4) 9.1 (3)Boys 59.3 (16) 29.6 (8) 11.1 (3)

InterestGirls 87.8 (29) 9.0 (3) 3.1 (1)Boys 59.3 (16) 29.6 (8) 11.1 (3)

Types of effort/interest pairs constructed

High/high–low/low High/low–low/highGirls 72.7 (24) 27.27 (9)Boys 62.9 (17) 37.1 (10)

Recall predictions for high/high and low/low pairs

High/high ú low/low High/high õ low/low High/high Å low/lowGirls 91.66 (22) 4.16 (1) 4.16 (1)Boys 70.58 (12) 17.65 (3) 11.76 (2)

Recall predictions for high/low and low/high pairs

High/low ú low/high High/low õ low/high High/low Å low/highGirls 33.3 (3) 44.4 (4) 22.2 (2)Boys 30.0 (3) 50.0 (5) 20.0 (2)

Note. N Å 33 girls and 27 boys.

of both girls’ [x2(2, N Å 33) Å 30.73, p õ .001] and boys’ [x2(2, N Å 27)Å 9.55, p õ .01] predictions about the effects of effort on recall. Follow-upz tests showed that both girls and boys predicted that high effort wouldproduce more recall than low effort more often than chance (z Å 9.82, p õ.00003 for girls; z Å 3.66, p õ .0002 for boys). Girls predicted that higheffort would produce less recall than low effort less often than chance (z Å02.25, p õ .02 for girls), but for boys this prediction did not differ from

condition will be 9 toys, then the probability that predicted recall in the low-effort conditionwill be greater than 9 is 10%, less than 9 is 80%, and equal to 9 is 10%. If calculated this way,the average (across-subjects) chance expectancy associated with each type of prediction is 45%for high ú low, 45% for high õ low, and 10% for high Å low. When the x2 and z tests inSession 1 were computed using these expectancies, the difference in the outcome for girls wasthat predictions that recall would be equal in high- and low-magnitude conditions (effort, interest,both) did not differ from chance. For boys, the omnibus x2 tests for predictions involving effortand interest did not achieve statistical significance at p õ .05. Note that the conclusions in thisexperiment are not altered by these findings.



chance (z Å 00.40, p õ .48). For both girls and boys, predictions that highand low effort would produce equal recall occurred less often than chance (zÅ 02.53, p õ .006 for girls; z Å 02.12, p õ .02 for boys).

Interest

Similar to effort, children made three types of predictions about the effectsof interest on recall [i.e., high ú low, high õ low, high Å low (see rows 3and 4 in Table 1)]. Findings from x2 tests indicated that the distribution ofgirls’ [x2(2, N Å 33) Å 39.86, p õ .001] and boys’ [x2(2, N Å 27) Å 9.55,p õ .01] predictions deviated significantly from chance. On follow-up, bothgirls and boys predicted that high interest would produce more recall thanlow interest more often than chance (z Å 15.57, p õ .00003 for girls; z Å3.66, p õ .0002 for boys). For girls, the prediction that high interest wouldproduce less recall than low interest occurred less often than would be ex-cepted by chance (z Å 02.53, p õ .006) but the frequency of this predictiondid not differ from chance expectancy for boys (z Å 00.40, p õ .48). (Notethat 33% of the children who predicted that high interest would produce lessrecall than low interest also predicted that high effort would produce lessrecall than low effort.) For both girls and boys, the prediction that high andlow interest would produce equal recall occurred less often than would beexcepted by chance (z Å 03.61, p õ .0002) for girls; z Å 02.12, p õ .02for boys).

Effort–Interest Pairs

Next, the effort–interest pairs constructed by the children were examined(see rows 5 and 6 in Table 1). Recall that children constructed one of twotypes of pairs. That is, they paired either high effort with high interest andlow effort with low interest (HH–LL) or high effort with low interest andlow effort with high interest (HL–LH). x2 tests revealed that the distributionof girls’ [x2(1, N Å 33) Å 9.32, p õ .01] but not boys’ pairs [x2(1, N Å 27)Å 1.81, p õ .1] differed from chance (i.e., a response rate of 50% for eachpair). Next, the children’s predictions about the effects of their effort–interestpairs on recall were examined. Children who constructed high effort–highinterest and low effort–low interest pairs made three types of predictions,HH ú LL, HH õ LL, HH Å LL (see rows 7 and 8 in Table 1). x2 testfindings indicated significant deviations from chance in the distribution ofboth girls’ [x2(2, N Å 24) Å 36.74, p õ .001] and boys’ [x2(2, N Å 17) Å10.71, p õ .01] recall predictions for HH–LL pairs. On follow-up, both girlsand boys predicted that the high–high pair would recall more than the low–low pair more often than chance (z Å 17.16 for girls; z Å 4.90 for boys, bothp õ .00003). Predictions that the low–low pair would recall more than thehigh–high pair or that recall would be equal for the pairs occurred less oftenthan chance for girls (z Å 02.53 for HH õ LL, z Å 02.77 for HH Å LL,both ps õ .006) but not boys (z Å 01.64 for HH õ LL, z Å 01.23 for HHÅ LL, both ps õ .1). Finally, the recall predictions for the children who



constructed HL–LH pairs were examined (i.e., HL ú LH, HL õ LH, HL ÅLH) (see the last two rows in Table 1). The distribution of those predictionsdid not deviate significantly from chance [x2(2, N Å 9) Å .66, p õ .8 forgirls; x2(2, N Å 10) Å 1.39, p õ .3 for boys].

What these findings indicate is that the majority of children believed thatan increase in either effort or interest would produce increased recall. Theyalso believed that high interest would elicit high effort leading to superiorrecall compared with a low interest–low effort combination. This pattern offindings, while evident for both male and female children, was stronger amongthe girls.

Next, to examine the effects of the task variables and their magnitude onthe number of items predicted for recall, a 2 (sex: female vs male) 1 2(magnitude: high vs low)1 3 (task variable: effort vs interest vs both) analysisof variance was carried out, where sex was a between-subjects variable andmagnitude and task variable were within-subject factors. Because 41 children(24 girls, 17 boys) constructed high effort–high interest and low effort–lowinterest pairs, the data from those subjects (but not the 19 who constructedHL–LH pairs) were entered into this analysis.2 A significant effect for magni-tude emerged, F(1,39) Å 47.65, p õ .0001, reflecting significantly higherrecall predictions in conditions of high (mean Å 8.32) relative to low magni-tude (mean Å 4.43). Individual means were high effort Å 8.07, low effort Å4.29, high interest Å 7.95, low interest Å 4.44, high effort and high interestÅ 8.95, low effort and low interest Å 4.56. The effects of sex and of taskvariable were not significant and there were no significant interactions. Thus,the children judged that increases in effort, interest, or both would producesignificant and equivalent increases in recall.

Overall, the findings from Session 1 indicate that the children, especially thegirls, believed that recall increases with effort and with interest. They also be-lieved that interest influences the amount of effort expended during study, suchthat high interest elicits high effort and leads to superior recall relative to a loweffort–low interest combination. Furthermore, they judged that varying theamount of effort, interest, or both would produce equivalent effects on recallperformance. Although these preschoolers did not distinguish between effort,interest, or both in terms of their quantitative impact on recall, it is very importantto note that 4- and 5-year-olds do not simply apply a ‘‘more of anything isbetter’’ rule when judging the effects of different variables on memory. That is,they distinguish between variables that have a positive effect on memory, likeeffort, and those that do not, like physical appearance. For example, Wellman(1978) has shown that 5-year-olds understood that number of items to be remem-

2 A separate 2 (sex) 1 2 (magnitude) 1 2 (task variable: effort vs interest) analysis of variancewas carried out, where data from all 60 subjects were included. A significant effect for magnitudeemerged, F(1,39) Å 37.02, p õ .0001, reflecting higher recall predictions in conditions of high(mean Å 7.96) relative to low magnitude (mean Å 4.96). The individual means were effort lowÅ 5.00, effort high Å 7.8, interest low Å 4.93, interest high Å 8.13.



bered and length of the retention interval influence memory whereas a person’sweight does not. Similarly, Loper and Hallahan (1982) demonstrated that pre-schoolers realize that a lot of effort is more helpful than a little but a little noiseis more helpful than a lot. The implications of these findings, particularly thislatter result, will be fleshed out in the Discussion.

SESSION 2

How realistic are the children’s beliefs about effort-interest-recall relations?Do preschoolers really increase their efforts to remember and recall more insituations of high relative to low interest? This issue was addressed in Session2. Here, each child completed either a high- or low-interest version of thememory task used in Session 1. The children’s effort deployment (defined asbehavior during study), recall, and attributions for recall to either effort orinterest were examined.

Method

Sample

All 60 children who participated in Session 1 also took part in Session 2,with an average of 8.5 days intervening between the two sessions. The childrenwere randomly assigned to either the high- or the low-interest condition, withthe constraint that, in each condition, there were equivalent numbers of fe-males and males and equivalent numbers of children who made the differenttypes of predictions in Session 1.

Materials

Two sets of toys were used, a high-interest and a low-interest set. Eachset contained 12 toys and the toys in each set were roughly matched for sizeand color. Earlier pilot testing had been conducted with a different sampleof eleven 4-year-olds. These pilot children had been shown the two sets oftoys. They had been asked to name all of the toys in each set and to indicatewhich of the two sets other children their age would most like to play with.The pilot children had named each set of toys equivalently well and hadagreed unanimously that others their age would prefer to play with the toysdesignated as the high-interest set. The 12 high-interest toys were a Barneydoll, a musical book, a bubble-making machine, a camera with working flash,a doctor’s kit, a dog that walked and barked, a flashlight, a moving policecar with a siren and flashing lights, a sewing machine, a spin-top, a taperecorder with tape, and a troll. Most of these toys required batteries. The 12low-interest toys were a large balloon that was not inflated, a baseball bat,two blocks, a large ribbon holder shaped like a crayon, a doll, a firefighter’shat, a flower, a hammer, a horse, a mirror, a pack of cards, and a pail.

Procedure

The children were seen individually by a female experimenter in a quietroom in their preschool. First, the recall task was explained to the children.



They were told that they would be playing a memory game similar to oneplayed at parties. Then, the experimenter explained how the game wasplayed. She pointed to a big bag that was lying on the floor and told thechildren that there were toys in the bag. She explained that she would soontake out the toys and put them on the floor. She told the children that shewould leave the toys out for a little while and then hide them again in thebag. She said that, while the toys were out, the children should try toremember them because, after they were hidden back in the bag, the experi-menter would ask the children to tell her all the toys they had seen. Finally,the children were told that they could do whatever they liked to rememberthe toys and that they would have three chances at remembering.

The children were given three study-distractor-test trials. On each trial, theexperimenter placed the toys at random in a semicircular array in front ofthe child. As she placed the toys, she identified each toy by name and demon-strated how it worked (e.g., turned on the high-interest police car, swung thelow-interest baseball bat). Then, the children were reminded that they coulddo whatever they liked with the toys to help remember them. At this point,study began and was continued for 3 min. Following 1 min of study, andagain following 2 min, the children were reminded to remember the toys.This was done to ensure that the children (especially in the high-interestcondition) did not forget the task requirements. After 3 min, the toys wereremoved and the children were given a pen and paper and spent 25 s drawingXs. This distractor task was included to eliminate short-term memory effects.With the distractor task completed, the children were asked to name the toys.Recall was discontinued when 20 s elapsed without the child recalling a newtoy. With recall complete the children were praised and told that they wouldnow have another chance. Then, the next study-distractor-test trial was intro-duced. When the children completed their third and final recall trial, theirattributions for their recall performance were elicited. The children were askedwhy they had remembered so many toys, because they tried a whole lot toremember or because they really loved the game (counterbalanced for order).The entire session was recorded on videotape.

Coding of the behaviors videotaped during study was based on proce-dures used by Baker-Ward et al. (1984), Lange et al. (1989), and O’Sulli-van (1993). Coding proceeded at 5-s intervals for each of the three studytrials. For each 5-s interval the following six behaviors were coded aspresent or absent: visual examination (looking at one or more toys),object manipulation (touching/manipulating a toy), naming (audible orvisually apparent verbalizing of toy names), elaboration (talking abouta toy), play (toy-appropriate play), or inattention (the child was not incontact with the toys). Two trained rates independently coded the studyperiod activities of 12 children (1,416 observation blocks of 5 s each).Interrater agreement ranged from 92.1 to 100% for the six study activities,with the average agreement exceeding 96% and disagreements resolvedthrough discussion.



TABLE 2Means and Standard Deviations (in Parentheses) for Number of Toys Recalled and Number of

Observation Blocks that Each Coded Behavior Occurred in, by Sex and Interest Condition

Females Males

High interest Low interest High interest Low interest

Items recalled 6.53 (1.18) 7.29 (1.60) 5.56 (1.81) 6.55 (2.13)Study activities

Visual examination 34.18 (4.31) 32.31 (5.41) 34.82 (2.88) 27.78 (8.07)Play 23.57 (11.72) 17.39 (10.91) 24.72 (12.45) 7.74 (10.10)Object manipulation 6.80 (4.97) 10.94 (7.30) 8.59 (4.33) 8.51 (8.48)Elaboration 7.31 (5.62) 5.34 (4.54) 7.13 (7.04) 3.21 (4.32)Naming 0.47 (0.96) 3.39 (4.28) 2.31 (3.04) 1.26 (2.51)Inattention 4.47 (6.90) 7.85 (7.43) 3.08 (5.48) 14.40 (9.50)Strategy score 49.19 (13.33) 64.37 (24.52) 58.92 (14.69) 48.52 (24.62)

Note. N Å 17 girls and 13 boys in the high-interest condition and 16 girls and 14 boys in thelow-interest condition.

Results

This section is organized as follows. First, the findings for recall perfor-mance are presented, followed by the analyses of behavior during study andrelations between behavior and recall. Next, results from the analyses of theattributional data are detailed and, finally, relations between recall estimates inSession 1 and recall performance in Session 2 are described. Where relevant,comparison of the findings from Session 2 with the children’s judgments inSession 1 is presented.

Recall Performance

The first row in Table 2 shows the means for recall for girls and boys inboth the high- and low-interest conditions, collapsed across trial. The numberof toys recalled was analyzed using a 2 (sex: female vs male) 1 2 (interest:high vs low) 1 3 (trial: 1 vs 2 vs 3) analysis of variance, where sex andinterest were between-subject variables and trial was a repeated measure.A significant effect for sex, F(1,56) Å 5.26, p õ .03, emerged, with girlsdemonstrating higher recall (mean Å 6.91) than boys (mean Å 6.05). Therewas a significant effect for trial, F(2,112) Å 8.81, p õ .001. Follow-upanalysis with Tukey’s HSD test (Hays, 1988) indicated that recall on Trial 2(mean Å 6.80) and Trial 3 (mean Å 6.77) was equivalent and significantlyhigher than recall on Trial 1 (mean Å 6.02). Finally, interest had a significanteffect on recall, F(1,56) Å 5.49, p õ .03, and recall was higher in the low-interest (mean Å 6.92) relative to the high-interest condition (mean Å 6.04).There were no significant interactions. In Session 1, these children had pre-dicted that recall would be superior in the high- relative to the low-interest



condition. As it turned out, the effects of interest on recall were in the oppositedirection to their expectations.

Behaviors during Study

The number of observation blocks during which each of the six studybehaviors occurred was calculated separately for each child and for each ofthe three study trials. This procedure yielded 18 scores per child (6 behaviors1 3 trials). The mean number of observation blocks (across trials) duringwhich each of the six coded study activities occurred in the high- and low-interest conditions for boys and girls is displayed in rows 2 through 7 ofTable 2 (in most instances more than one study activity was observed within a5-s observation block, resulting in a total of means that exceeds 36). Behaviorsduring study were analyzed with 2 (sex: female vs male) 1 2 (interest: highvs low) 1 3 (trial: 1 vs 2 vs 3) analyses of variance, one for each of thebehaviors.

Analysis of the visual examination data revealed a significant main effectfor interest, F(1,56) Å 12.31, p õ .001, which was qualified by a significantInterest 1 Sex interaction, F(1,56) Å 4.16, p õ .05. On follow-up with theSpjotvoll and Stoline modification of the HSD test (Kirk, 1982), boys lookedat the toys more often in high- than in the low-interest condition but interestdid not affect girls’ looking behavior. None of the other contrasts were statisti-cally significant. Analysis of the play data revealed a significant effect forinterest, F(1,56) Å 20.18, p õ .0001, and a significant Interest 1 Sex interac-tion, F(1,56) Å 4.40, p õ .05. On follow-up, boys played with the toys morein the high- than in the low-interest condition while interest did not signifi-cantly affect girls’ play. Also, the contrast between boys and girls in the low-interest condition was approaching significance at p õ .06. Trial also influ-enced play, F(2,112) Å 13.96, p õ .0001. Post hoc tests (Tukey’s HSD)revealed that children played less on the first trial (mean Å 14.66) than onthe second trial (mean Å 20.21) and third trial (mean Å 20.55).

Analysis of the object manipulation data revealed no significant effects.Interest influenced the frequency of elaboration, F(1,56) Å 6.99, p õ .02,reflecting significantly more elaboration in the high- (mean Å 7.22) comparedwith the low-interest (mean Å 3.88) group. Analysis of the naming datarevealed a significant Sex 1 Interest interaction, F(1,30) Å 6.90, p õ .002.On follow-up, girls named the low-interest toys significantly more often thanthe high-interest toys. For boys, although the contrast between the high- andlow-interest conditions was not statistically significant, the trend in those datawas in the opposite direction to girls. That is, boys named more often in thehigh- than in the low-interest condition. Finally, there was a significant effectof interest on inattention, F(1,56) Å 20.23, p õ .0001, and this was modifiedin turn by a significant Interest 1 Sex interaction, F(1,56) Å 5.9, p õ .02.Post hoc tests showed that boys were more often inattentive in the low- thanin the high-interest condition, whereas inattention for girls was equivalent



across interest conditions. Also, in the low- but not the high-interest condition,boys were more inattentive than girls.

Because some of the individual behaviors are more strategically appropriatethan others (e.g., naming vs playing), a weighted strategy score was calculated.Following a procedure outlined by Lange et al. (1989), scores were calculatedto give most weight to the children’s use of mature mnemonic study behaviors,that is, looking, touching, and naming the toys. For each 5-s block, codersassigned a weight of 1 to an occurrence of visual examination, a weight of2 to object manipulation, and a weight of 3 to naming. Weights were tabulatedand summed over the 36 observations blocks per trial. When the strategyscores were analyzed with a 2 (sex) 1 2 (interest) 1 3 (trial) analysis ofvariance, a significant Sex 1 Interest interaction emerged, F(1,56) Å 9.23, põ .004 (see the last row in Table 2). Post hoc tests indicated that girls in thelow-interest condition evidenced significantly more mature strategic behaviorthan girls in the high-interest group or than boys in the low-interest group.Although not statistically reliable, boys in the high-interest group had higherstrategy scores than those in the low-interest condition.

Recall that in Session 1 these children had predicted that high interestwould elicit more effort than low interest. Findings from the analyses ofbehavior during study indicate that this expectation was realistic for boys butnot girls. That is, most of the coded behaviors occurred more frequently inthe high-interest condition where children maintained their attention to, lookedat, talked about, and played with the toys more. However, with the exceptionof elaboration, statistically reliable differences were only obtained acrossinterest levels for boys. The overall effect of interest on these four behaviorswas that boys responded to low interest with increased inattention and de-creased interaction with the toys. In contrast, girls maintained more equilib-rium in the frequency of these behaviors across interest levels. When themore mature mnemonic behaviors, naming and the weighted strategy score,are considered, a different pattern across sex and interest conditions is evident.These behaviors tended to be more frequent in the high-interest condition forboys. In contrast, girls in the low-interest condition evidenced more strategicmnemonic behavior, including naming the toys seven times more often, thangirls in the high-interest group. Overall, boys deployed more effort into eachbehavior in the high-interest condition whereas girls deployed more effortinto specific mature strategies in the low-interest condition.

Relations between Behavior during Study and Recall

To examine the effects of behavior during study on recall, a series ofmultiple regressions was conducted. The six activities during study wereentered into a separate analysis for each sex, interest condition, and trial. Dueto the number of analyses conducted, a was set at .01. Only two significantfindings emerged. On Trial 1, for boys in the high-interest condition, playingwas negatively related to recall accounting for 48% of the variance in recallperformance [F(1,11) Å 12.05, p õ .01]. On Trial 1, for girls in the low-



interest condition, elaboration was negatively related to recall, accounting for43% of the variance in that measure [F(1,14) Å 12.12, p õ .01]. In view ofthe generally poor relationships found between individual study behaviorsand recall, and because of the possibility that the children used differentcombinations of activities to enhance recall, the weighted strategy scores wereentered into regression analyses. No significant relationships between thesescores and recall emerged on any trial, for boys or girls, in either the high-or the low-interest conditions.

In Session 1, these children predicted that increased effort would produceincreased recall. Overall, there was no straightforward relationship betweenindividual children’s effort deployment during study and their recall perfor-mance. This absence of significant behavior-recall performance links is com-mon in research with preschoolers (Baker-Ward et al., 1984). Of all thebehaviors measured here, naming is particularly effortful for preschoolers(Bjorklund, 1987; Miller & Seier, 1994). The absence of significant correla-tions between recall and naming, a strategy demonstrated to be effective forolder children’s recall, indicates that naming was utilization deficient for thesechildren (see also Baker-Ward et al., 1984; Miller & Seier, 1994).

Attributions for RecallWhen the children had completed their third test trial, they were asked

whether their recall performance was due to their study efforts or their interestin the task. Three children (2 girls and 1 boy) in the high-interest conditionsaid they did not know. Of the 57 children who made an attribution, 51%implicated their efforts and 49% implicated interest. There were no systematicdifferences between boys (50% Å effort, 50% Å interest) and girls (52% Åeffort, 48% Å interest) or between high- (48% Å effort, 52% Å interest) andlow-interest conditions (53% Å effort, 47% Å interest). Furthermore, whenchildren’s attributions were compared with the direction of their judgmentsin Session 1 about the influence of high and low effort and interest on recall,no significant relationships emerged. These findings fail to support the hypoth-esis that preschoolers would attribute their recall performance to their efforts.

To explore relations between attributions and study activity, six analyses ofvariance were conducted, one for each study activity. For each analysis, a 2(attribution: effort vs interest) 1 2 (interest: high vs low) design, with the datacollapsed across trials, was used. (Trial was not entered as a factor because it hadlittle effect on any of the study activities.) Of interest in these analyses weresignificant main effects for, or interactions involving, attributions. Only one sig-nificant effect emerged. Attributions significantly influenced naming, F(1,28) Å4.63, p õ .05. The children who attributed recall to their efforts named the toysthree times more often during study (mean Å 2.94) than children who attributedtheir recall to interest (mean Å 0.70).

Consistency between Session 1 Recall Judgments and Session 2 RecallCorrelations between the number of toys that the children predicted would

be recalled on the different tasks in Session 1 and their recall performance



in Session 2 failed to reveal any significant effects. In Session 1, the childrenhad predicted that 44% of the toys would be recalled on low-magnitude tasks(low effort, low interest, low both) compared with 83% of the toys on high-magnitude tasks (effort, interest, both). However, as things turned out theythemselves recalled 58% of the low-interest and 50% of the high-interesttoys. Thus, the effect of varying effort and interest was considerably lessextreme than the children expected and their own performance was closerto their estimates for tasks of low magnitude. Overestimation of memoryperformance is common among preschoolers (e.g., Schneider & Pressley,1989) but what the current findings underscore is that, in fact, the children’sbest performance (in the low-interest condition) closely matched their worst-case estimates!

Summary

The major findings from this session were that, first, recall was superiorin the low- compared with the high-interest condition. Second, although manybehaviors (e.g., playing, looking) were more frequent in the high-interestcondition, especially for boys, and mature strategic behavior was more com-mon in the low-interest condition for girls, no significant relations betweenbehavior and recall were found. Finally, children were just as likely to attributerecall to their effort as to interest, but attributions to effort were reliablyassociated with increased use of a naming strategy during study.

DISCUSSION

This study was designed to measure preschoolers’ beliefs about effort-interest-recall relations and to establish the realism of those beliefs. What didthe children believe? Most believed that others their age would try harder toremember if they were very interested in the task. They also believed thatthese additional efforts would translate into superior recall. How realistic didthose beliefs turn out to be? Their beliefs about the effects of interest oneffort turned out to be realistic for boys but not girls. Furthermore, theirexpectation that the increased efforts elicited by high interest would be con-verted into superior recall was not realized. Indeed, study effort was notreliably related to recall in either interest condition. Overall then, the chil-dren’s beliefs turned out to be quite naive. These findings are important fora number of reasons.

First, the findings illustrate the necessity of determining, directly, the real-ism of preschoolers’ beliefs. When put to the test here, preschoolers’ beliefsabout effort, interest, and recall turned out to be quite naive. In previousresearch, either the issue of realism was not addressed or researchers simplyconcluded that preschoolers’ beliefs were valid. For example, when 3- and4-year-olds judged that interest would influence preschoolers’ listening behav-ior, Miller and Zalenski (1982) concluded that they understood that interestaffects learning, although the basis for that conclusion was not spelled out.However, the current findings indicate that while preschoolers have estab-



lished beliefs that are consistent with what adults have told them (Miller &Aloise, 1989; Stipek & MacIver, 1989), these beliefs do not represent a veryrealistic account of preschoolers’ own memory functioning. Indeed, there isgrowing evidence that in their early beliefs about memory, preschoolers mayapply heuristic beliefs constructed from their everyday social, leisure, andcognitive experiences, beliefs that may be valid in other domains but notnecessarily valid in the context of preschoolers’ memory (e.g., Miller, 1985;Miller & Aloise, 1989; O’Sullivan, 1993; Wellman, 1988, 1990). If the pre-schoolers in this study applied such heuristic folk beliefs in Session 1, thenit is not too surprising that those beliefs bore little relation to behavior andperformance in Session 2. If we want to understand fully how preschoolers’beliefs influence, and are influenced by, their behavior, we need to determinethe realism of those beliefs.

Although the direction of the preschoolers judgments in Session 1 wasconsistent with folk belief, the reasoning behind their judgments about thequantitative effects of effort, interest, or both on recall was not obvious. Thatis, the children judged that varying the magnitude (high vs low) but not thetype of memory variable involved (effort, interest, both) would determineamount recalled. Recall that preschoolers do not apply a ‘‘more of anythingis better’’ rule when judging the effects of different variables on memory. Infact, they distinguish between variables that facilitate memory and those thatdo not (Loper & Hallahan, 1982; Wellman, 1978). In this study, then, whenjudging the individual and combined effects of two beneficial variables(Miller & Zalenski, 1982; O’Sullivan, 1993; Wellman et al., 1981), judgmentswere predicated on the amount, not the type, of variable involved. How canthis be explained? Researchers have long argued that preschoolers’ recallpredictions are driven by effort considerations (Bjorklund et al., 1992; O’Sulli-van & Joy, 1994; Pressley et al., 1987). If this is true, then the children inthis experiment may have believed that interest works through effort to influ-ence recall and all of their predictions in Session 1 involving interest (eitheralone or combined with effort) may have proceeded from that belief. Thisinterpretation is also consistent with the belief-desire reasoning important inyoung children’s theorizing about the mind (Wellman, 1990). That is, childrenoften explain actions in terms of preferences or liking (interest). Effort is anaction variable and children may have believed that the preschoolers would tryhard because they liked the memory game, wanted to do well, and presumablybelieved that effort would help them achieve that goal. Thus, desire (interest)predicts action (effort) which, in turn, predicts performance. Of course, limita-tions in cognitive development may also be contributing to these findings.For example, in previous research, 4-year-olds have demonstrated a fragileability to consider the effects of two causes simultaneously by using one toenhance or discount the other (Miller & Aloise, 1989). In future research,the reasoning behind preschoolers’ judgments about effort and interest shouldbe investigated.

Second, these findings add to the accumulating evidence that the effects



of interest on cognition are quite complex. In this study, interest had a negativeeffect on recall. Kropp (1983) also found that 4-year-olds on a long-termmemory task demonstrated superior recall of less versus more interestingstories. Similarly, Oyen and Bebko (1996) reported that 4- to 7-year-oldsrecalled less when a serial recall task was presented in the context of aninteresting computer game compared with the traditional task presentationused in memory research. In contrast, Renninger and Wozniak (1985), usingan immediate recall task, demonstrated that when the fifth toy in a set of ninewas matched to each individual child’s interest, preschoolers’ recall at thefifth position was enhanced. Clearly, differences in task demands (delayed vsimmediate recall), group versus individual manipulations of interest, materials(toys vs stories), and opportunity to interact with the to-be-remembered mate-rials [e.g., the experimenter held the toys and showed them one at a time tosubjects in Renninger and Wozniak (1985)] are associated with differentfindings concerning the effects of interest on preschoolers’ memory.

Why did the high-interest toys have a negative effect on recall performance?After all, the high-interest toys elicited increased attention, play, elaboration,and looking behavior. In previous research, higher frequencies of these behav-iors have often been associated with increases in recall for preschoolers,certainly not decreases (e.g., Newman, 1990). The major difference betweenthis and these earlier studies (besides the interest manipulation) is that herethe increased attention, play, talking, and looking were demonstrated on anexplicit memory task where children were told to remember. (Recall that toensure children would not forget the task demands, they were reminded twiceduring each study trial that their goal was to remember the toys.) In previouswork where these behaviors were associated with superior recall, the behaviorswere demonstrated on what would be considered an implicit memory task,that is, where children were simply instructed to play and were later given asurprise recall test (Baker-Ward et al., 1984; Newman, 1990). Thus, it maybe the case that playing and talking about toys, while helpful for recall onan implicit memory task, may interfere with performance when produced athigh frequencies in response to an explicit memory task where children areinstructed to remember.

The effects of interest were not confined to recall but extended to behaviorduring study, where it exerted a differential influence on boys and girls.Although boys and girls demonstrated equivalent mature strategy use in thehigh-interest condition, girls generalized and increased the frequency of thesebehaviors in the less interesting condition more than boys. These sex differ-ences in mnemonic strategy use are consistent with Waters and Schreiber’s(1991) hypothesis that there is a developmental lag between males and femalesin strategic processing. Specifically, girls initiate strategy use earlier thanmales under favorable task conditions and girls generalize strategy use to lessfavorable task conditions sooner than boys. In this study, despite equivalentstrategic behavior in the high-interest condition, girls but not boys respondedto the more difficult low-interest task with increased strategic behavior, espe-



cially naming. Furthermore, these findings also suggest that one effect ofinterest on preschoolers’ cognition may be that high interest supports theearly expression of strategic mnemonic behavior. That is, the involvementwith the task elicited by high-interest toys may provide the type of supportingcontext in which early strategies first emerge (Bjorklund, 1987; Miller &Seier, 1994). Importantly, Oyen and Bebko (1996) also found evidence thatinterest supports strategy use. The 4- to 7-year-olds in that study demonstratedsignificantly more overt rehearsal when a serial recall task was presented ina more versus less interesting (computer game vs traditional memory experi-ment) context. What this means is that interest may play a role similar to therole played by background knowledge in strategic development (Bjorklund,1987). This hypothesis needs to be pursued more vigorously in future research,where relationships between the different types of interest and knowledge areestablished, together with their independent and interactive influences onemerging strategic behavior (Schneider & Bjorklund, 1992; Hidi & Baird,1988; Renninger & Wozniak, 1985).

Third, the findings illustrate how different measures of preschoolers’ beliefscapture consistent views of effort and interest but are related to behavior indifferent ways. That is, in Session 1, the children judged that effort andinterest were equivalently influential for recall and, consistent with thosejudgments, they were just as likely to implicate effort as interest when ex-plaining their performance in Session 2. However, of all these metamemorymeasures, only attributions to effort were reliably related to behavior. Attribu-tions to effort predicted the frequency of naming, the most effortful and mostmature mnemonic demonstrated here (Bjorklund, 1987; Miller & Seier, 1994).There are several differences between the prediction and attributional mea-sures. For example, predictions were made about others whereas attributionswere made about the self; predictions involved quantitative judgmentswhereas attributions involved forced-choice judgments. In addition, childrenapply general beliefs about memory to predict performance but they applyspecific beliefs about the task at hand when explaining their performance onthat task (Fabricius & Cavalier, 1989). Although seldom included in researchwith preschoolers, there is growing evidence that causal attributions are espe-cially sensitive measures of young children’s beliefs about strategic behaviorengaged in during a task (Fabricius & Cavalier, 1989; Fabricius & Hagen,1984; O’Sullivan, 1996). In this study, the finding that attributions to effortreliably predicted use of a naming strategy supports that hypothesis. This isone of the first findings directly linking preschoolers’ metamemory to theirstrategic activity (see also Fabricius & Hagen, 1984) and it is very important.It supports hypotheses that beliefs about effort drive preschoolers’ persistentuse of strategies, strategies that, while utilization deficient for this age group,will (with practice) soon become effective mnemonics for them (Bjorklundet al., 1992; Miller & Seier, 1994; Pressley et al., 1987).

Finally, in this study sex differences in beliefs about effort and interest, inbehavior during study, and in recall were found. That is, there was more



consensus among girls than among boys about the effects of effort and intereston each another and on recall. Also, on the free recall task, girls maintainedmore equilibrium in study behavior across interest levels, demonstrated moremature strategy behavior in the low-interest condition, and recalled more thanboys. Thus, for girls, naive metamemory beliefs were firmly established andthey were associated with strategic and performance advantages. Bjorklundand Green (1992) have suggested that naivete in metamemory may be adevelopmental advantage rather than a disability. For example, they suggestthat a firm belief in the power of effort will motivate children to persist inusing a strategy even though it may not be helpful immediately. The findingsin this study provide some support for that hypothesis and suggest that in thecase of metamemory about interest and effort, girls’ firmly established naivebeliefs may accrue strategic and performance benefits for them. Although sexdifferences have not been a major concern in metamemory research (Schnei-der & Pressley, 1989), the present findings suggest that they may be a contrib-uting factor to sex differences in strategic memory and its development (Wa-ters & Schreiber, 1991).

REFERENCES

Anderson, R. C., Mason, J., & Shirey, L. (1984). The reading group: An experimental investiga-tion of a labyrinth. Reading Research Quarterly, 20, 6–38.

Baker-Ward, L., Ornstein, P., & Holden, D. J. (1984). The expression of memorization in earlychildhood. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 37, 555–575.

Bjorklund, D. (1987). How age changes in knowledge base contribute to the development ofchildren’s memory: An interpretative review. Developmental Review, 7, 93–130.

Bjorklund, D., Coyle, T., & Gaultney, J. (1992). Developmental differences in the acquisition andmaintenance of an organizational strategy: Evidence for the utilization deficiency hypothesis.Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 54, 434–448.

Bjorklund, D., & Green, B. (1992). The adaptive nature of cognitive immaturity. AmericanPsychologist, 47, 46–54.

DeLoache, J. S., Cassidy, D. J., & Brown, A. L. (1985). Precursors of mnemonic strategies invery young children’s memory for the location of hidden objects. Child Development, 56,125–137.

Fabricius, W. V., & Cavalier, L. (1989). The role of causal theories about memory in youngchildren’s memory strategy choice. Child Development, 60, 298–308.

Fabricius, W. V., & Hagen, J. W. (1984). Use of causal attributions about recall performance toassess metamemory and predict strategic memory behavior in young children. DevelopmentalPsychology, 20, 975–987.

Garner, R., Alexander, P. A., Gillingham, M. G., Kulikowich, J. M., & Brown, R. (1991). Interestand learning from text. American Educational Research Journal, 28, 643–659.

Hays, W. L. (1988). Statistics. New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston.Hidi, S. (1990). Interest and its contribution as a mental resource for learning. Review of Educa-

tional Research, 60, 549–572.Hidi, S. (1995). A reexamination of the role of attention in learning from text. Educational

Psychology Review, 7, 323–350.Hidi, S., & Baird, W. (1988). Strategies for increasing text-based interest and students’ recall of

expository texts. Reading Research Quarterly, 23, 465–483.Howe, M. L., & O’Sullivan, J. T. (1990). The development of strategic memory: Coordinating

knowledge, metamemory, and resources. In D. F. Bjorklund (Ed.), Children’s strategies:Contemporary views of cognitive development (pp. 129–155). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.



Kirk, R. (1982). Experimental design: Procedures for the behavioral sciences. Monterey, CA:Brooks/Cole.

Kropp, J. (1983). Preschool children’s preferences and recall for stereotyped versus nonstereo-typed stories. Sex Roles: A Journal of Research, 9, 261–272.

Lange, G., MacKinnon, C. E., & Nida, R. E. (1989). Knowledge, strategy, and motivationalcontributions to preschool children’s object recall. Developmental Psychology, 25, 772–779.

Loper, A. B., & Hallahan, D. P. (1982). Meta-attention: The development of awareness of theattentional process. The Journal of General Psychology, 106, 27–33.

Miller, P. H. (1982). Children’s integration of information about noise and interest levels in theirjudgements about learning. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 33, 536–546.

Miller, P. H. (1985). Children’s reasoning about the causes of human behavior. Journal ofExperimental Child Psychology, 39, 343–362.

Miller, P. H. (1990). The development of strategies of selective attention. In D. F. Bjorklund(Ed.), Children’s strategies: Contemporary views of cognitive development (pp. 157–184).Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Miller, P. H., & Aloise, P. A. (1989). Young children’s understanding of the psychological causesof behavior: A review. Child Development, 60, 257–285.

Miller, P. H., & Seier, W. L. (1994). Strategy utilization deficiencies in children: When, where,and why. In H. Reese (Ed.), Advances in child development and behavior, Vol. 25 (pp.107–156). New York: Academic Press.

Miller, P. H., & Weiss, M. G. (1982). Children’s and adults’ knowledge about what variablesaffect selective attention. Child Development, 53, 543–549.

Miller, P. H., & Zalenski, R. (1982). Preschoolers knowledge about attention. DevelopmentalPsychology, 18, 871–875.

Newman, L. S. (1990). Intentional and unintentional memory in young children: Rememberingv. playing. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 50, 243–258.

Ornstein, P. A., Baker-Ward, L., & Naus, M. J. (1988). The development of mnemonic skill. InF. E. Weinert & M. Perlmutter (Eds.), Memory development: Universal changes and individ-ual differences (pp. 31–50). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

O’Sullivan, J. T. (1993). Preschoolers beliefs about effort, incentives and recall. Journal ofExperimental Child Psychology, 55, 396–414.

O’Sullivan, J. T. (1996). Children’s metamemory about the influence of conceptual relations onrecall. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 62, 1–29.

O’Sullivan, J. T., & Joy, R. M. (1994). If at first you don’t succeed: Children’s metacognitionabout reading problems. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 19, 118–127.

Oyen, A., & Bebko, J. (1996). The effects of computer games and lesson contexts on children’smnemonic strategies. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 62, 173–189.

Pressley, M., Borkowski, J. G., & Schneider, W. (1987). Cognitive strategies: Good strategy userscoordinate metacognition and knowledge. In R. Vasta (Ed.), Annals of Child Development, 4,80–129.

Renninger, K. A. (1990). Children’s play interests, representation and activity. In R. Fivush &J. Hudson (Eds.), Knowing and remembering in young children (pp. 127–165). Cambridge,MA: Cambridge University Press.

Renninger, K. A., Hidi, S., & Krapp, A. (Eds.). (1992). The role of interest in learning anddevelopment. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Renninger, K. A., & Wozniak, R. H. (1985). Effect of interest on attentional shift, recognitionand recall in young children. Developmental Psychology, 21, 624–632.

Sadoski, M., Goetz, E., & Fritz, J. (1993). Impact of concreteness on comprehensibility, interest,and memory for text: Implications for dual coding theory and design. Journal of EducationalPsychology, 85, 291–304.

Schneider, W., & Bjorklund, D. (1992). Expertise, aptitude and strategic remembering. ChildDevelopment, 63, 461–473.



Schneider, W., & Pressley, M. (1989). Memory development between two and twenty. New York:Springer-Verlag.

Shirey, L. S., & Reynolds, R. E. (1988). Effect of interest on attention and learning. Journal ofEducational Psychology, 80, 159–166.

Stipek, D., & MacIver, D. (1989). Developmental changes in children’s assessment of intellectualcompetence. Child Development, 60, 521–538.

Waters, H. S., & Schreiber, L. L. (1991). Sex differences in elaborative strategies: A develop-mental analysis. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 52, 319–335.

Wellman, H. (1978). Knowledge of the interaction of memory variables: A developmental studyof metamemory. Developmental Psychology, 14, 24–29.

Wellman, H. (1983). Metamemory revisited. In M. T. H. Chi (Ed.), Trends in memory develop-ment (pp. 31–51). Basel, Switzerland: S. Karger.

Wellman, H. (1988). The early development of memory strategies. In F. E. Weinert & M.Perlmutter (Eds.), Memory development: Universal changes and individual differences (pp.3–29). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Wellman, H. (1990). The child’s theory of mind. Cambridge, MA: Bradford Books/MIT Press.Wellman, H. M., Collins, J., & Glieberman, J. (1981). Understanding the combination of memory

variables: Developing conceptions of memory limitations. Child Development, 52, 1313–1317.

RECEIVED: March 23, 1995; REVISED: August 14, 1996.


effort, interest, and recall: beliefs and behaviors of preschoolers

Documents