Congruity and elaboration in children's and adults' free and cued recall

Experiments with adult subjects have shown that congruity among the elements of an encoded event provides a better basis for free and cued recall of the elements than does incongruity (Craik & Tulving, 1975; Schulman, 1974). In addition, the degree of elaboration, or complexity, of the encoded event has been found to be directly related to free and cued recall, provided the elements of the event form a congruous relationship (Craik & Tulving, 1975). The present experiments were conducted to assess the effects of congruity and complexity on the memory performance of first- and fifth-grade children and of college students