Recitation as a structured intervention to enhance the long-term verbatim retention and gist recall of complex texts in kindergarteners

• In Event: Enhance cognitive functions across development: factors, strategies or interventions

Abstract

Recitation is an effective way for children to become familiar with basic blocks of
knowledge. It is not clear however whether repeated, structured exposure to complex texts via
listening or active reciting benefits the ability of kindergarteners to retain verbal material in
long-term memory, verbatim and as content. Here, we tested the effectiveness of teaching
longer texts, to kindergarteners, by repeated exposure, in terms of long-term retention (6
months). A set of 28 rhyming sentences (224 words) were introduced, three in each session,
and the increasingly longer text was practiced by either voiced recitation or listening. The
rhymes were in a literary language and word meaning in each new rhyme was elaborated
when first introduced. Both groups showed good long-term retention; but, the recitation group
outperformed the listening group when assessed at 24 hours, 1-month and 6-months post-
intervention, in terms of the recall rate, error rate, number of prompts required and sequence
fidelity. In the later assessments, the reciting group was the more fluent in producing the
rhymes. Moreover, at 6-months post-intervention the gist (content) of the rhymes and the
meaning of vocabulary items from the texts were robustly retained, with an advantage for the
recitation group. Thus, practice affording multiple repetitions, specifically active recitation,
resulted in fluent, effortless and accurate, recall of statements and their content. We propose
that these results support the notion that repetition based practice may promote the mastery of
complex verbal material by enabling better engagement of procedural memory, i.e., by
promoting proceduralization processes.

Authors

• Hazar Eghbaria-Ghanamah, University of Haifa
  Presenting Author

• Rafat Ghanamah, University of Haifa
  Non-Presenting Author