Memory and organizational processes in children of high and average intellectual ability

The purpose of the present study was to investigate organizational processes in the free recall of children having average and high intelligence test scores. If existing IQ tests are in some way assessing individual differences in basic cognitive processes, we should expect to observe differences in the performance of psychometrically determined bright and average children on laboratory tasks designed to study these processes. Subjects in the study were 88 public-school children, 44 in the third grade and 44 in the fifth grade. Twenty-two children at each grade level had IQ scores greater than 120. Twenty-two children at each grade level had IQ scores between 90 and 109. Equal numbers of males and females were tested at each IQ and grade level. The children were individually administered four tasks, which were separated by at least two days. The four tasks consisted of a metamemory interview concerning organization and memory, multitrial free recall of unrelated words, multitrial free recall of categorized words, and a sorting task followed by free recall of the sorted words. The metamemory and sorting tasks were presented first and last, respectively; the order of the remaining two tasks was counterbalanced across children