Early Development of Knowledge Storing and Memory

Gwenn Garland

1. Introduction



The memory of five to six-year-olds is still in a state of development in which information is mostly only accessible through specific means rather than generalized questions. But as schoolchildren, the problem of inert knowledge is already apparent. The way discussions are led influences the way children learn: different styles of teaching turn the same experience into two entirely separate ways of remembering.

In an experiment conducted at the Early Childhood Center, I accompanied two groups of kindergarten and first grade children to a planetarium to see a program on planets. Group A consisted of children who had not studied the solar system in the previous weeks; Group B had extensively studied the planets, each child researching a different one and making a papier-mache model of it. The children in Group B were generally younger than those in Group A.

The planetarium program was in the form of a story about two children who make acardboard rocket and a talking science book, who takes them on an imaginative tour of the solar system, explaining a little about each planet along the way. The children were not allowed to ask questions during the program, but had a question session afterwards. Only one child had ever been to a planetarium before. After the presentation, children were taken outside and shown a scale model of the distances between the planets.

The study to be made of these children would pursue the question of how they remembered, how they applied what they lremembered to what they had already learned, and how much preparation might affect an experience. What could be done to really make children learn from a fun field trip that was meant to be educational?

Next: Methods