Children’s note taking as a mnemonic tool

When given the opportunity to take notes in memory tasks, children sometimes make notes that are not useful. The current study examined the role that task constraints might play in the production of nonmnemonic notes. In Experiment 1, children played one easy and one difficult memory game twice, once with the opportunity to make notes and once without that opportunity. More children produced functional notations for the easier task than for the more difficult task, and their notations were beneficial to memory performance. Experiment 2 found that the majority of children who at first made nonmnemonic notations were able to produce functional notations with minimal training, and there was no significant difference in notation quality or memory performance between spontaneous and trained note takers. Experiment 3 revealed that the majority of children could transfer their training to a novel task. The results suggest that children’s production of nonmnemonic notes may be due in part to a lack of knowledge regarding what task information is important to represent or how to represent it in their notes rather than to an inability to make functional notes in general.