Visual Abstraction in Children and Adults

This study attempted to examine whether a copy theory of memory that views memory as essentially a library of stored experiences, or a generative memory model that depends on constructive and integrative processes is the more descriptive of the memory representation of children and adults. Neither children nor adults manifested responses compatible with a generative memory model. The children appeared to attend primarily to the presented configurations on an individual basis, whereas adults based recognition judgments more so on observed frequency properties across configurations. Thus a copy theory of memory was more descriptive of the memory representations of children and adults. Also, in both groups, the color of a configuration appeared to be a salient factor in the recognition of a configuration if the color was not seen in previous configurations. Color preference among colors already seen differed between children and adults.