The authors investigated the effects of relevant and irrelevant visual stimuli on preschoolers' memory for verbal material. Eighty-seven preschool children, ranging in age from 35 to 66 months, heard a story. The children viewed a picture relevant or irrelevant to the story or viewed no picture while listening and were tested for memory through visual and verbal recall tasks. Those children who viewed the relevant picture performed better than the irrelevant and no-picture groups on both the visual and verbal tasks. The performance of those children who viewed the irrelevant picture was task dependent. We discuss the findings in terms of visual versus verbal encoding, and practical applications in the areas of law and education are suggested.

©2013  Psi Chi - The International Honor Society in Psychology, All Rights Reserved