THE ROLES OF IMAGERY, LANGUAGE, AND METAMEMORY IN CROSS-MODAL TRANSFER IN CHILDRE

Cross-modal transfer is the capacity to make available to one sensory system information about a stimulus acquired by a second sensory system. The association of imagery, language, and metamemory with cross-modal transfer was studied in 5-year-old and 7-year-old children. Twenty right handed 5-year-olds and twenty right handed 7-year-olds were given either a tactual-visual or visual-tactual cross-modal transfer task without any delay (0 seconds) or with a delay (30 seconds). Additionally, they received imagery tasks measuring spatial recall and rotation imagery, language tasks assessing vocabulary and word usage, metamemory questions to monitor knowledge about memory and the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) to insure that performance was unrelated to differences in intelligence. Imagery was found to be significantly related to cross-modal transfer. Those children who performed better on the spatial recall task also performed better on the cross-modal transfer task. Neither of the language measures were related to cross-modal transfer performance. (Cross modal transfer performance was unrelated to the children's PPVT scores.) These results are consistent with the ability of preverbal infants and infrahuman primates to exhibit cross-modal transfer.;Metamemory was also found to be unrelated to cross-modal transfer.;Twenty other right handed 5-year-olds and 20 other right-handed 7-year-olds were given either an intra-modal visual or intra-modal tactual transfer task. Overall, 7-year-olds performed better than the 5-year-olds on the transfer tasks. Additionally, all children performed better on the tasks involving visual input as compared to tactual input, and visual recognition as compared to tactual recognition.;There were no differences between the children's performance with a 0-second delay and a 30-second delay. This may relate to the careful controls of hand used in stimulus palpation, children's handedness, and intervals for stimulus presentation and recognition.