The present study investigated the development of verbal and visual processes in short-term sequential memory for pictorial material. Different groups of Ss from Grades I, III, and V were given eight trials on a serial recognition task with Acoustically Dissimilar (AD), Acoustically Similar (AS), or Abstract (A), pictures. The AD pictures had distinctive-sounding names, the AS pictures had acoustically similar names and the A pictures were abstract reconstructions of the components of items from the first two lists. Each S was presented with five items from one of the three lists, one by one. After presentation S had to point to the pictures he had seen, in the order in which they had been presented, on a panel bearing the complete set. -- Performance was highest for list AD, followed by list AS and A respectively, and improved with increasing age on all lists. The difference between lists AD and AS within each grade was statistically reliable only for Grade III. List A was significantly different from list AS in any grade. A supplementary analysis of performance on list A alone, which included only those Ss who reported using no labelling strategies for these items, revealed that the Grade V Ss were not different from Grades I and III. These results, along with the results of serial position analyses, were interpreted as providing further support for the influence of both verbal and visual processes in picture memory
