Free Recall and Rehearsal Strategies in Average and Severely Disabled Readers

Abstract

Free recall and rehearsal strategies were investigated in 43 boys and 24 girls in fifth and sixth grades; they were 18 average and 49 severely disabled readers. Memory abilities were measured by recall in the overt recall condition in a written free-recall test of three lists of 20 words each that required second-grade reading ability or less. Average readers performed better than severely disabled readers in terms of total recall and long-term memory. Elaborative rehearsal strategies rather than non-elaborative rehearsal strategies (repetition only) discriminated between the two groups. The organizational ability represented in elaborative rehearsal strategies was the hypothesized mechanism responsible for the better long-term memory and total recall observed in average readers.