Metamemory, incentives and the use and generalisation of a cumulative rehearsal strategy in mildly retarded children

The major issue addressed in this study was the relation-ship between the use and generalisation of a trained mnemonic strategy and metamemory, knowledge of memory, obtained after training in the strategy, in mildly retarded children. Twenty-five mildly retarded children were trained to use a cumulative rehearsal strategy in a free recall, list learning task. Use of the strategy in the training task and generalisation of the strategy to a novel task were assessed concurrently by two measures of rehearsal (overt rehearsal scores and linear trend in item exposure times), in conditions of high and low incentive to remember where subjects were respectively, either reinforced or not-reinforced for recall. Three measures of different aspects of metamemory were obtained before and after training in strategy use. Only one of these measures indicated significant change in metamemory following training in the rehearsal strategy. Canonical correlations were performed on the post-test independent measures (the three measures of metamemory) and the dependent measures (the two measures of rehearsal) obtained after training. These analyses did not indicate significant relationships between post-test metamemory and use or generalisation of the rehearsal strategy in either high or low incentive conditions. The findings of this study are discussed in relation to the involvement of automatic versus conscious control of strategy use.