Effects of sorting on subsequent recall of unrelated items: a developmental study.

Second graders, fifth graders, and adults participated in 2 experiments designed to study the effects of sorting on subsequent recall of unrelated words. 1 group sorted the items freely, while a second group was constrained to learn the sorting schemes generated by free subjects. In the first experiment, subjects sorted until they reached a criterion of organizational stability. In Experiment 2, sorting was terminated prior to reaching a stable criterion. Recall and output clustering were reduced in Experiment 2, relative to Experiment 1, because of organizational instability. No meaningful differences were found in either experiment in the sorting schemes generated by free subjects in the 3 age groups, nor was there an effect of age of yoking partner on performance of constrained subjects. This result differed from previous research, and it was concluded that the sorting technique diminished differences in organizational behavior usually found between older and younger subjects.