Children's Memory for Atypical Actions in Script-Based Stories: An Examination of the Disruption Effect

JOBNAME: JECP 61#2 PAGE: 1 SESS: 22 OUTPUT: Sun Jun 2 02:46:02 1996/xypage/worksmart/tsp000/67973e/8pu

Children’s Memory for Atypical Actions in Script-BasedStories: An Examination of the Disruption Effect

DENISEDAVIDSON AND DIANA JERGOVIC

Loyola University, Chicago

The disruption effect was examined in two recall experiments with 6- and 8-year-oldchildren. The disruption effect refers to the finding that atypical actions that disrupt thegoal or subgoals in a story are better recalled than atypical actions that are irrelevant to thegoals. However, in the first recall experiment, vivid irrelevant actions were better recalledthan disruptions that were obstacles (i.e., blocked or impeded the flow of the story’sactions in some way), but were not better recalled than disruptions that were distractions,or unexpected mishaps. In order to examine why the disruption effect was found fordistractions but not for obstacles several factors were considered, including type of dis-ruption, typicality ratings, and the potential consequences that could be generated from thedisruptions. The results of a second recall experiment suggest that disruptions that lead tomore potential consequences, particularly more severe consequences, are better recalledthan other disruptions. The results of these experiments provide evidence that the disrup-tion effect is more complex than originally believed and may be dependent upon boththe type of irrelevant and disruptive atypical actions present in a story.© 1996 Academic

Press, Inc.

Considerable research has explored the development of children’s scriptknowledge (e.g., Farrar & Goodman, 1992; Fivush, 1984; Hudson, 1988; Nelson,1986). Script knowledge includes an understanding of the temporal and causalsequences of actions that typically occur for a particular event, such as thoseactions that typically occur while shopping at a grocery store or dining at arestaurant. In order to examine the development of children’s script knowledge,a handful of procedures have been developed. These procedures include, but arenot limited to, the actual reenactment of scripted sequences (e.g., Farrar &

Portions of this research were presented at the 60th Society for Research in Child DevelopmentMeeting, New Orleans, LA. We thank Hayne Reese and an anonymous reviewer for their thoughtfulcomments and suggestions. We also thank the children, parents, principals, and teachers at thefollowing schools: Our Lady of Lourdes, Our Lady of Mercy, St. Gertrude, St. Matthias, St. Thomasof Canterbury, and St. Timothy. We also acknowledge the following individuals who aided in datacollection and coding: Catherine Balenger, Kimberly Bruett, Sony Hoe, Zubia Imami, Sharon Lytel,Dagmar Pavlata, Katherine Stanek, Elizabeth Szendre, and Lynn Van Swol. Address correspondenceand reprint requests to Denise Davidson, Department of Psychology, Loyola University, Chicago,6525 N. Sheridan Road, Chicago, IL 60626.

JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL CHILD PSYCHOLOGY61, 134–152 (1996)ARTICLE NO. 0009

1340022-0965/96 $18.00Copyright © 1996 by Academic Press, Inc.All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.


Goodman, 1992; Hudson, 1990) to the presentation of scripted stories (e.g.,Adams & Worden, 1986; Davidson & Hoe, 1993; Hudson, 1988). Children’smemory of the scripted sequences or story actions is then used as at least onemeasure of children’s script knowledge. Based on the results of this research,there is ample evidence that children develop script knowledge very early in life(Nelson, 1986; Nelson & Gruendal, 1981).Recently, it has been noted by researchers that children’s memory for script

deviations, or atypical actions, may also provide information about children’sscript knowledge. Although most studies have focused on how children’s scriptknowledge influences their memory for typical actions, a few recent studies havebeen particularly interested in the factors that underlie memory for atypicalactions (Davidson & Hoe, 1993; Hudson, 1988). By examining memory forscript deviations, not only is a better understanding of the development of scriptknowledge possible but also a better understanding can be gained about howdeviations from scripts are remembered. The purpose of the present research wasto further this understanding by examining how different types of atypical ac-tions, those that disrupt the goals or subgoals in the story and those that areirrelevant to the goals, are remembered by children.The dearth of studies on children’s memory for atypical actions may be due,

in part, to the fact that few memory models make specific assumptions about howdifferent types of atypical actions will be remembered. For example, the script-pointer-plus-tag (SP + T) hypothesis that has guided previous research on chil-dren’s (e.g., Davidson & Hoe, 1993; Hudson, 1988) and adults’ memory (e.g.,Bower, Black, & Turner, 1979; Davidson, 1994; Maki, 1990), makes no specificpredictions about how well different types of atypical actions will be remem-bered. According to the SP + T hypothesis, all atypical actions are assumed to betagged in the same manner, and with the same strength, to the memory repre-sentation (Schank & Abelson, 1977; Smith & Graesser, 1981).However, in the few studies that have examined memory for different types of

atypical actions it has been found that both children (Davidson & Hoe, 1993;Hudson, 1988) and adults (Bower et al., 1979; Davidson, 1994) recall someatypical actions better than others. For example, Hudson (1988) found that atypi-cal actions that temporarily disrupted the completion of the goal of the story (e.g.,At the grocery store, they dropped some eggs on the floor.), were better recalledby children than atypical actions that were irrelevant to the goal (e.g., At thegrocery store, John tied his shoe.). According to Hudson (1988), this “disruptioneffect” is due to disruptive actions being perceived as more important, andsubsequently being stored more efficiently, than irrelevant actions.That is, disruptions may be more causally connected to antecedent and sub-

sequent actions than irrelevant actions because disruptions may set up situationsor problems that must be remedied in order for the events of the story to proceed(Hudson, 1988). In turn, it is often these disruptions or problems that provide apoint to the story, or at the very least, make the story more interesting (Mandl,

135DISRUPTION EFFECT


Stein, & Trabasso, 1984; Mandler, 1984). Recent research with adults supportthese arguments, as it has been found that actions that have more causal con-nections with other actions are perceived as more important, and are rememberedbetter, than actions with fewer connections (e.g., Trabasso & Sperry, 1985;Trabasso & van den Broek, 1985). In contrast, irrelevant actions may not onlyhave fewer connections, but may in fact be “dead-end” statements with few if anyconnections.However, one potential limitation of previous research is that the irrelevant

actions used in the stories were “relatively pallid and routine” (Bower et al.,1979). It is possible that more descriptive or vivid irrelevant actions would bebetter recalled, regardless of the number of connections they have to otheractions. In fact, it is possible that vivid irrelevant actions may be as well recalledas disruptive actions. According to Bower et al. (1979), vivid irrelevant actionsshould be well recalled because these actions should lead to a von Restorff, orisolation, effect.The von Restorff effect refers to the phenomenon where isolating an item

against a homogenous background facilitates the learning and retention of theisolated item (Wallace, 1965). In script-based stories, typical actions may forma homogenous background whereby atypical actions may stand out from thescript actions, particularly if they are vivid in some way. An isolation effect isalso predicted by, and compatible with, the schema confirmation-deploymentmodel of Goodman and her colleagues (e.g., Farrar & Goodman, 1990, 1992;Goodman, 1981). According to Farrar and Goodman (1990), if a schema for anevent exists and is functioning as a coherent mental unit, then actions that areconsistent with the schema should be absorbed by the schema (schema-confirmation). In contrast, actions that can be isolated from the script should notonly be better attended to, but also may lead to a separate memory (schema-deployment) for the schema discrepant information.Developmental evidence for an isolation or von Restorff effect can be found

in a study conducted by Davidson and Hoe (1993). In their study, they found thatchildren recalled implausible irrelevant actions (i.e., implausible in terms of thecontext of the story), better than more plausible irrelevant actions. As Davidsonand Hoe (1993) suggest, it may be that actions that plausibly intermix with thecontext of the story easily become a part of the story’s background. In contrast,actions that cannot plausibly intermix with the story may stand out more, andreceive more attention in an attempt to make sense out of them, than moreplausible actions.However, it is not known if atypical actions that are plausible yet irrelevant to

the goals in the story will be well recalled if they are vivid in some way. Toexamine this question, pallid and vivid forms of plausible irrelevant actions wereused in the present research. Vivid sentences were constructed by simply em-bellishing pallid sentences with additional adjectives and/or adverbs. The generalmeaning of the sentence, however, was maintained. For example, the pallid

136 DAVIDSON AND JERGOVIC


sentence “They saw a boy from school” was in its vivid form: “They saw a boyfrom school whom they both liked a lot.” Notice that the gist of the sentence (i.e.,they saw a boy from school) remained the same for each version.Therefore, one goal of this research was to compare children’s memory for

pallid and vivid irrelevant actions with their memory for disruptive actions. Thiscomparison is noteworthy because it is not known from previous research if thememory advantage for disruptive actions, or the disruption effect, would befound when vivid irrelevant actions were used in the stories. It could be that thedisruption effect found in previous research was an artifact due to the use ofpallid irrelevant actions.In addition, in order to more thoroughly understand the factors underlying the

disruption effect two types of disruptions were used in the present research:obstacles and distractions. As noted by Schank and Abelson (1977), disruptiveactions can interrupt the goal or the flow of the story in several ways. Forexample, an obstacle results when an enabling condition for an imminent actionis missing, or when the flow of actions is blocked in some way (e.g., At thegrocery store, they couldn’t go down an aisle because people were blocking it.).Distractions, on the other hand, are unexpected mishaps or interruptions, such asspilling one’s drink. Although obstacles and distractions were used in Hudson’s(1988) developmental study, neither typicality ratings nor memory for these twodifferent types of disruptions were examined. However, because the results ofour frequency judgment task (see below) revealed that obstacles were seen asmore frequently occurring than distractions, at least for the events in question, ofinterest in this research was whether the disruption effect would be found acrossboth obstacles and distractions.Along with children’s memory for atypical actions, children’s memory for

script actions was also assessed in the present research. In previous studies,children recalled atypical actions from script-based stories better than typicalactions immediately and 24 hours after presentation (Davidson & Hoe, 1993;Hudson, 1988). Of interest in the present research was whether a similar patternof results would be found. A finding of an overall memory advantage for atypicalactions would be in line with the schema confirmation-deployment model thatpredicts that once children development a coherent script for a given event, thendiscrepant information is more likely to be attended to (e.g., a von Restorffeffect) and remembered (Farrar & Goodman, 1990, 1992; Goodman, 1981). Thiswould suggest that both younger and older children’s better memory for atypicalactions in previous research (Davidson & Hoe, 1993; Hudson, 1988) may havebeen due to the fact that their scripts for the events in question were fairly welldeveloped, and thus, atypical actions should have been discrepant from thesescripts.In the present research, one means for roughly determining the development of

children’s script knowledge for the stimulus events (i.e., going to the grocerystore and going to the movies) was to administer a frequency judgment task. Byasking children to judge how frequently they thought particular actions occurred



for each event, it was possible to get a rough indicator of actions children saw astypical or atypical of the event. In addition, differences in children’s ratings couldbe used to indicate developmental differences in children’s script knowledge.Finally, the frequency judgment task was used to confirm that the script actionsused in the stories were seen by all children as more typical and frequentlyoccurring than the atypical actions used in the stories. Frequency judgment taskshave been used in previous research for similar reasons (Davidson & Hoe, 1993;Hudson, 1988).

EXPERIMENT 1: FREQUENCY JUDGMENT TASK

Method

Subjects.Twenty first grade (mean age4 6.4; age range 6.2 to 7.1) and 20third grade children (mean age 8.7; age range 8.3 to 9.3) participated. Thechildren were attending parochial schools in primarily lower middle-class tomiddle-class areas of Chicago and Evanston, Illinois. Approximately equal num-bers of boys and girls participated. All children were asked if they had been tothe stimulus events, the grocery store and the movies, at least several times. Onlythose children responding in the affirmative participated in the frequency judg-ment task.Materials and procedure.The children were asked to rate 32 sentences, 16 for

the grocery store and 16 for the movies event. For each event, children wereasked to rate four sentences of each type: script, pallid irrelevant, vivid irrelevant,and disruptions (i.e., two obstacles and two distractions). Two obstacles and twodistractions were used instead of four each because when the frequency judgmenttask was conducted previous developmental research had not differentiated be-tween the two types of disruptions. Therefore we were not expecting significantdifferences in their ratings. Script actions were drawn from Davidson and Hoe(1993) and at one point had been generated by children in response to a questionsuch as the following: “Can you tell me everything that occurs when you gogrocery shopping?” In addition, a sample of college students had previouslyclassified these actions as script actions that typically occur for the respectivestimulus events (Davidson, 1994).Atypical actions were generated by the first author. As previously described,

vivid irrelevant actions were simply the pallid irrelevant actions embellished withadjectives or adverbs (see the Appendix). However, the gist of the sentence wasthe same in both its pallid and vivid forms. Vivid irrelevant actions were vividin the sense that they were more descriptive and generally more informative thanthe pallid versions. Furthermore, a sample of college students (n 4 20) ratedthese actions in terms of vividness (on a 1 to 5scale, with 5 representing veryvivid, descriptive, and easy to imagine). A repeated-measures analysis of vari-ance conducted on these ratings revealed a main effect of type of action,F(3,54)4 24.81,p < .001. Post hoc Tukey tests revealed that vivid irrelevant sentences(M 4 3.9) were perceived as more vivid and descriptive than pallid irrelevant



sentences (M 4 2.92),p < .05. Interestingly, no significant differences in ratingswere found between script (M 4 3.00) and pallid actions.The disruptive actions, obstacles and distractions, were adapted from previous

research with adults (Davidson, 1994). The gist of these actions (e.g., spillingpopcorn) was not changed from the adult study. Instead, the same actions wereused but were written in a simpler form to accommodate young children. Inaddition, the obstacles and distractions had previously been classified into theserespective categories (i.e., obstacles and distractions) by a sample of collegestudents (Davidson, 1994). Furthermore, the same college students who had ratedthe vividness of the irrelevant actions also rated the vividness of the disruptions.No significant differences were found in the vividness ratings of vivid irrelevantactions (M 4 3.9), obstacles (M 4 3.8) and distractions (M 4 3.9).The children were tested individually in a quiet room of their school. Half the

children rated the grocery store sentences first, and then approximately 10 minlater they rated the movie sentences. The remaining children rated the moviesentences first and then the grocery store sentences. In the interim, the childrenhad a snack.Similar to previous research (e.g., Davidson & Hoe, 1993), the children were

told “I want to find out what you know about what happens when you go to thegrocery store (or movies). I’m going to read you some things about going to thegrocery store (or movies) and I want you to tell me if they always, sometimes,or never happen when you go to the grocery store (or movies).” For each event,the children were read the typical and atypical sentences in a random order andtheir judgments were recorded. Then the sentences for the second event wereread in the same manner, and the children were asked to rate them.

Results and Discussion

Frequency ratings were computed based on a scale used by Hudson (1988),with Never4 1 to 34 Always. Mean typicality ratings are shown in Table 1.In Table 1, ratings are collapsed across gender because initial analyses revealedno significant differences between boys’ and girls’ ratings. A mixed-modelanalysis of variance, with age (6, 8 years old) as a between-subjects variable andevent (grocery store, movie) and type of action (script, pallid irrelevant, vivid

TABLE 1Children’s Mean Frequency Ratings of Typical and Atypical Actions

Irrelevant Disruption

Age Script Pallid Vivid Obstacles Distractions

6-year-olds 2.57 2.05 1.74 1.90 1.63 (1.60)8-year-olds 2.88 2.06 1.61 2.05 1.38 (1.30)

Note. Children’s ratings could range from 1 (never occurs) to 3 (always occurs). Numbers in theparentheses are the ratings for the modified distractions used in Experiment 2 (see text for explana-tion).



irrelevant, disruptions) as within-subjects variables, was performed on children’sratings.An age × type of action interaction,F(3,114)4 5.58,p < .021, was found, as

was a main effect of type of action,F(3,114)4 151.46,p < .0001. Simple maineffects analysis and post hoc Tukey tests revealed several findings, (allps < .05).First, analysis of the interaction revealed that younger children judged that vividirrelevant actions and disruptions occurred about the same, whereas older chil-dren judged that the disruptions occurred more frequently than the vivid irrel-evant actions. In addition, although script actions were rated by both younger andolder children as occurring more often than any of the atypical actions, olderchildren rated script actions as more typical or frequently occurring than youngerchildren. In contrast, no developmental differences were found in younger andolder children’s ratings of the irrelevant actions, as both younger and olderchildren rated the pallid irrelevant actions as occurring more often than vividirrelevant actions (see Table 1).Interestingly, significant differences were found in both younger and older

children’s ratings of the obstacles and distractions. Specifically, distractions wererated as less frequently occurring than obstacles (see Table 1). However, nosignificant differences were found in the ratings of actions within the categoriesof script, pallid irrelevant, and vivid irrelevant sentences, nor did event (grocerystore and movies) enter into any significant effects.Although frequency judgment ratings may be considered only a rough indi-

cator of typicality, nevertheless, both younger and older children’s judgments offrequency were in line with our classification of actions into typical and atypicalcategories. Typical actions were not only rated as more frequently occurring thanany of the atypical actions, they were also perceived by children as almost alwaysoccurring for their respective event. However, older children rated the scriptactions as a bit more frequently occurring than younger children. This suggestthat there may be differences in younger and older children’s script knowledgefor the stimulus events that in turn may affect children’s memory. As previouslynoted, the schema confirmation-deployment model (Farrar & Goodman, 1990)suggests that discrepant actions will be well attended to and may even be retainedas a separate memory entity, provided that children have a coherent, well-developed script representation of the event. Differences in the frequency ratingsof atypical actions also suggest that the atypical actions that were judged as morefrequently occurring (e.g., pallid irrelevant actions) should be perceived as lessdiscrepant from the event and subsequently should be less well recalled. Thesepredictions were assessed in the recall experiments.

EXPERIMENT 2: RECALL

Method

Subjects.Subjects were 20 first grade children (mean age 6.5; age range 6.1 to7.2), and 20 third grade children (mean age 8.6; age range 8.2 to 9.3) who had



not participated in the frequency judgment task but were drawn from schools inthe same areas. For each age group, approximately half the children were maleand half were female. All of the children who participated in the recall experi-ment reported that they had been to the stimulus events (i.e., grocery store andmovies) at least several times. Two first graders were replaced because they didnot remember anything, or at least could not report anything, from the stories.Materials. Two versions of each story, “Going to the Grocery Store” and

“Going to the Movies” were created. Both versions of the stories can be seen inthe Appendix. Each story consisted of two typical script sentences, two pallidirrelevant sentences, two vivid irrelevant sentences, two disruptive sentences(one obstacle and one distraction), and an introductory and a closing sentence.All actions in the stories were randomly drawn from the frequency judgmenttask. Because of the results of the frequency judgment task, stories were initiallycreated with two obstacles and two distractions in them. Unfortunately, pilottesting revealed that these stories were too lengthy for the youngest children torecall. However, the stories that were constructed for this research did not differsignificantly from the length of stories used in previous research (Davidson &Hoe, 1993; Hudson, 1988).The script and the disruptive sentences were the same in both versions of a

story. However, the pallid irrelevant actions used in Version A were presented intheir vivid form in Version B and vice versa (see the Appendix). The script andthe disruptive actions were the same in both story versions so that memory for thepallid irrelevant actions could be compared with memory for vivid irrelevantactions within the context of the same script and disruptive actions. Ten childrenfrom each age group heard Version A stories, while the remaining 10 childrenfrom each age group heard Version B stories.Procedure and design.The children were tested individually in a quiet room

at their school. A practice session began the experiment, during which the chil-dren were told “I would like to read you a story and then I would like to see whatyou remember about the story.” A short (four propositions) practice story abouta cat who liked to eat was read and the children were asked to recall it. Thechildren were asked to recall as much as possible, and were encouraged to do sowith the prompts “Do you remember anything else? What else happened in thestory?” If a child could not recall any of the practice story, the story was readagain, and the child was again asked to recall it. All of the children recalled someof the story after the second reading.The children were then read the grocery store and the movies stories (either

version A or B), with presentation of the stories counterbalanced. After a storywas read, a brief pause was taken (i.e., the children were asked one or two generalquestions about themselves). Using the same prompts used in the practice ses-sion, children were then asked to recall as much of the story as possible. Chil-dren’s recall was audio tape recorded.The second story was then read and the children were asked to recall it in the

same manner as the first story. One day later the children were asked to recall the



stories in the order that they were presented on the first day. Thus, and consistentwith previous studies (e.g., Davidson & Hoe, 1993; Hudson, 1988), retentioninterval was a within-subjects variable. Although the optimal design would havehad retention interval as a between-subjects variable, pilot testing revealed thatthis was nearly impossible to do with many of the first graders. Specifically,children in a delayed-only condition (i.e., the children were asked to recall thestories only on the second day), often remembered nothing, or at least reportednothing. Furthermore, the delayed-only condition appeared stressful and frustrat-ing for some of the children when they could not remember.Data coding.Following Davidson and Hoe’s (1993) and Hudson’s (1988)

methodology, a reported sentence was scored correct if its meaning was correctlyrecalled. For example, “Some people sat in front of them and they couldn’t seeover their heads” was coded as recall of the sentence “Some people blocked theirview and they couldn’t see very well.” However, in most of the cases childrenrecalled the sentences nearly verbatim. Two independent coders scored the recalldata, and agreement between them was .94.Also coded from the recall data were intrusions, or any information reported

that was not in the story. Intrusions were coded as script, irrelevant, or disruptiveactions. Coding was carried out by the same two scorers above, and agreementbetween them was .98.

Results

Mean recall proportions for each type of action are shown in Table 2. Initialanalyses revealed that several factors: gender of subjects, counterbalancing ofstories, story version (A or B), and story event (grocery store or movies) did notenter into any significant effects. Therefore, the results are collapsed across thesefactors in Table 2.A mixed-model analysis of variance was conducted on the data, with between-

subjects variables age (6,8), version (A, B), gender, and counterbalancing ofstories, within-subjects variables event (grocery store, movies), delay (immedi-ate, 24 h), and type of action (script, pallid irrelevant, vivid irrelevant, obstacles,

TABLE 2Mean Proportion of Typical and Atypical Actions Recalled in Experiment 1



Immediate recall6-year-olds .41 .13 .48 .33 .73 (.42)8-year-olds .39 .25 .54 .46 .73 (.47)

Delayed recall6-year-olds .49 .09 .35 .23 .64 (.36)8-year-olds .47 .11 .43 .38 .64 (.41)

Note. Numbers in parentheses reflect overall proportion of story information recalled.



and distractions). Because the possible proportions for script, pallid, and vividirrelevant actions (i.e., 0, .50, 1.00) differed from the proportions possible foreach type of disruptive action (i.e., 0, 1.00), the following strategy was used toexamine recall of the different types of actions. From each category (i.e., script,pallid, vivid, obstacle, distraction) one of the two actions from each story waschosen at random so that the analysis would be based on an equal number ofactions from each category. The mixed-model analysis of variance was thenconducted on that data (it should be noted that the same pattern of findingsdescribed below was obtained when the data were re-analyzed with the otherscript, pallid, and vivid action).This analysis revealed a delay x type of action interaction,F (4,128)4 3.76,

p < .001, and main effects of delay,F(1,32)4 14.59,p < .001, and type ofaction,F(4,128)4 18.82,p < .0001. Several findings emerged when simplemain effects analysis and post hoc Tukey tests (ps < .05) were conducted on theresults. Perhaps the most important finding was that the disruption effect, ormemory advantage for disruptive actions, was found only for the distractions. Onboth days of testing, and regardless of story event or story version, distractionswere significantly better recalled than any of the other actions. In contrast,obstacles were not better recalled than vivid irrelevant actions. As predicted,vivid irrelevant actions were better recalled than pallid irrelevant actions, thelatter of which were the least well recalled across all stories and delays. Finally,the analysis of the interaction revealed that while the recall of atypical actionsdecreased on the second day of testing, recall of script actions actually increased.In addition, because very few intrusions were found in the data, an analysis of

recall scores with intrusions included (using an adjusted recall measure fromGraesser et al., 1980), revealed a similar pattern of findings as that noted above.Likewise, when number of words in a sentence and when number of propositionsin a sentence were used as covariates the pattern of results did not change.Finally, to determine if any of the results were due to the position of the actionin the story (i.e., primacy or recency effects), correlations were computed be-tween the number of 6- and 8-year-old children recalling each type of action ineach story with the position of the action in the story. None of these correlationswere significant.

Discussion

The results of Experiment 2 suggest that certain complexities underlie memoryfor different types of atypical actions in script-based text. In Experiment 2,disruptive distractions were better recalled than all other actions across agegroups, stories, and retention intervals. In contrast, disruptive obstacles wereconsiderably less well recalled than distractions, and in fact were not betterrecalled than the vivid irrelevant actions. In other words, the disruption effectwas found for distractions but not for obstacles.In contrast to previous research findings, the results of Experiment 2 suggest

that the disruption effect is not simply the result of an action interrupting the goal



of the story in some way. Thus, it cannot be assumed that disruptive actions ingeneral will be better recalled than actions that do not disrupt the goals orsubgoals of the story. Of interest was why distractions were better recalled thanthe other actions in the story, including the obstacles.It may be that distractions were better recalled because they were less typical

than the other actions. On the frequency judgment task both 6- and 8-year-oldsrated distractions as less frequently occurring for their respective events than anyof the other actions. However, typicality alone could not have accounted for therecall of atypical actions, given that obstacles and pallid irrelevant actions wererated similar to each other but obstacles were consistently better recalled thanpallid actions. Another difference, however, was found to exist between theobstacles and distractions.Specifically, when a group of children (see below) were asked to tell us

everything they thought might happen following an atypical action, it was foundthat more potential consequences were generated for the distractions than for theobstacles. This was considered an important difference given that research withadults has shown that story actions with more real or potential connections toother story statements are better recalled than actions with fewer connections(e.g., Trabasso & van den Broek, 1988; van den Broek, 1988). In fact, recentresearch with adults has found that disruptions with more connections (real orinferred) to other story statements are better recalled than disruptions with fewerconnections, regardless of if they are obstacles or distractions (Davidson, 1994).In order to more fully assess what factors (i.e., typicality or consequences) mayhave influenced differences in the recall of obstacles and distractions, a secondrecall experiment was conducted.In the second recall experiment, the distractions were changed (with a few

simple wording changes) so that while the new distractions were rated similar intypicality to the original distractions, less consequences were generated fromthem (see below). For example, we changed the grocery store distraction from“John dropped a carton of eggs” to “John dropped an apple.” In Experiment 3,memory for these new distractions was assessed along with memory for theother, original actions.

EXPERIMENT 3: RECALL

Method

Subjects.Subjects were 18 first grade children (mean age 6.5; age range 6.1 to7.2), and 18 third grade children (mean age 8.6; age range 8.2 to 9.3), who hadnot participated in the other tasks, but were drawn from schools in the same areas.Eight children from each age group were asked to generate consequences for allof the atypical actions, while the remaining 10 children from each age group wereasked to recall the stories. In each age group, half the children were male and halfwere female. All of the children reported that they had been to the stimulusevents (movies and grocery store) at least several times. Four first graders were



replaced; two because they did not remember anything from the stories and twobecause they were absent on the second day of recall testing.Materials and procedure.Only version A stories were used because no sig-

nificant differences were found in Experiment 2 between version A and B stories.The only change in the stories was that the distractions were altered with a fewsimple wording changes. Specifically, the distraction “John dropped a carton ofeggs” was changed to “John dropped an apple.” Similarly, the distraction “Theirfather tripped and his popcorn flew everywhere.” was changed to “Their fathertripped and a piece of popcorn fell from his box.” It should also be noted thatwhile another strategy for the second experiment would have been to change theobstacles so that more consequences could be generated from them, we foundthat this was not done with just a few simple wording changes. That is, the gistof the sentence had to be altered as well. For example, we could have said thatthey “really needed to go down one store aisle”, but we found that this did notlead to that many more consequences being generated as the original version (i.e.,“They couldn’t get down one store aisle because people were blocking it”). Incontrast, by simply changing what the boy dropped, a carton of eggs or an apple,we were able to change the number of consequences children saw for thatdistraction (see below). Thus, this strategy was utilized in Experiment 3.For the generation of consequence task, the children were asked to generate as

many consequences as they could for the atypical actions (version A). For ex-ample, children were told: “Suppose a boy was at the grocery store and hedropped a carton of eggs on the floor. Can you tell me what you think wouldhappen afterwards? Tell me everything you think would happen.” We also askedthese children to rate the new actions in terms of typicality, using the sameprocedures used in the frequency judgment task.Finally, the same procedure used in Experiment 2 to collect children’s recall

of the stories was used in Experiment 3.Data coding.The same two coders who coded the recall data from Experiment

2 coded the consequences generated and the recall data from Experiment 3. Onlythose consequences that were plausible were analyzed (agreement between cod-ers on plausibility was .98). The recall data were coded using the same codingmethodology used in Experiment 2. Interrater agreement for story recall wasapproximately .91.

Results

The mean number of consequences generated for each type of atypical actionis shown in Table 3. A mixed-model analysis of variance conducted on the datarevealed an age x type of action (pallid, vivid, disruptions) interaction,F(2,28)44.59,p < .019, and a main effect of type of action,F(2,28)4 40.65,p < .0001.Simple main effects analysis and post hoc Tukey tests showed that younger andolder children generated about the same number of consequences for obstacles,whereas older children generated more consequences for the other actions. Over-all, however, both younger and older children generated more consequences for



disruptions than for the other actions, and less consequences were generated forpallid irrelevant actions than for the other actions,ps < .05. Importantly, althoughmore consequences were generated from the original distractions than from thenew ones, it was found that the new distractions were not rated significantlydifferent in typicality from the original distractions. These additional ratings areincluded on Table 1 with the original ratings.Mean recall proportions for each type of action are shown in Table 4. Because

gender and counterbalancing of stories did not enter into any significant effectsthe data are collapsed across these factors in Table 4. The same strategy used inExperiment 2 for analyzing recall of the different types of actions was used toexamine recall of actions in Experiment 3. This mixed-model analysis of vari-ance (with between-subjects variables age, gender, and counterbalancing, andwithin-subjects variables event, delay, and type of action), revealed main effectsof delay,F(1,36)4 17.85,p < .0001, and type of action,F(4,144)4 6.71,p <.0001.Post hoc Tukey tests (ps < .05) revealed a disruption effect, as both obstacles

and distractions were better recalled than the other actions. However, in contrastto the results of Experiment 2, the obstacles and modified distractions were notrecalled significantly different from each other. It was also found that vividirrelevant actions were better recalled than pallid actions, which were the leastwell recalled (see Table 4).

TABLE 3Mean Number of Consequences Generated for Each Type of Atypical Action


Age Pallid Vivid Obstacles Distractions

6-year-olds .52 .80 1.19 1.88 (1.22)8-year-olds .78 1.19 1.16 1.94 (1.29)

Note. Numbers in parentheses reflect consequences generated for the modified distractions used inExperiment 2 (see text for explanation).

TABLE 4Mean Proportion of Typical and Atypical Actions Recalled in Experiment 2



Immediate recall6-year-olds .45 .25 .48 .55 .55 (.46)8-year-olds .50 .30 .50 .55 .55 (.48)

Delayed recall6-year-olds .40 .18 .35 .45 .50 (.38)8-year-olds .43 .28 .43 .50 .55 (.43)

Note. Numbers in parentheses reflect overall proportion of story information recalled.



As expected, children’s recall of the modified distractions was poorer than therecall of the original distractions (which was revealed by comparing the resultsof Experiments 2 and 3 with experiment as a between-subjects factor). Interest-ingly, without particularly memorable distractions in the stories, children wereable to recall the other actions better (including the obstacles), to perhaps sometype of overall capacity limit. In fact, a comparison of children’s recall acrossexperiments revealed that mean overall recall of story actions was not signifi-cantly different between experiments (see Tables 2 and 4).Finally, using the measures used in Experiment 2 (e.g., serial position of story

actions, number or words in a sentence), the same pattern of findings noted abovewas obtained.

Discussion

The results of the second recall experiment provide further evidence for thedisruption effect found in previous research (Hudson, 1988). However, the re-sults also provide evidence that the extent to which disruptive actions are recalledcan be manipulated, and thus, it is inappropriate to claim that disruptive actionswill always be better recalled than other story actions. In particular, as shown bythe results of Experiment 3, when the distractions were altered with a few minorwording changes, not only were these distractions seen by children as resultingin fewer potential consequences, but these distractions were also less well re-called than the originals used in Experiment 2.However, it is acknowledged that more than just the consequences alone may

have affected recall of disruptions. Children not only generated more conse-quences for the original distractions, these consequences were often found to beof an emotional nature. These consequences were also seen as more severe,particularly from an emotional viewpoint. For example, children suggested thatdropping a carton of eggs might make one upset, or might upset others such asone’s parents, but generally did not allude to emotional consequences with re-gards to dropping an apple. In addition, the original distractions may have beenwell recalled because they produced richer and more vivid consequences than theother actions. As shown in the present research, vividness can aid recall (see alsoRatner & Foley, in press, for a discussion). Nevertheless, vividness alone couldnot have accounted for the recall patterns, given that vivid irrelevant actions wererated the same in vividness as the original distractions but were not as wellrecalled. However, vividness coupled with a disruption effect appeared to sig-nificantly enhance recall. Unfortunately, in the present research number and typeof consequences (e.g., emotionality, severity, vividness) were correlated witheach other and therefore could not be separated from each other unless com-pletely different story actions were constructed.

GENERAL DISCUSSION

The purpose of the present research was to more thoroughly examine thedisruption effect found previously in children’s recall of atypical actions (Hud-



son, 1988). The disruption effect refers to the finding that actions that disrupt thegoal or the flow of the story in some way are better recalled than atypical actionsthat are irrelevant to the goal. However, one potential limitation of previousresearch was that memory for goal-disruptive actions was compared to memoryfor fairly mundane goal-irrelevant actions. It may be that the disruption effectfound in previous research was an artifact due to the use of pallid irrelevantactions. In order to circumvent this problem, in the present research pallid irrel-evant actions were made more vivid or descriptive, and memory for both pallidand vivid irrelevant actions was compared to memory for disruptive actions (withratings of vividness the same for vivid irrelevant and both types of disruptiveactions). Of interest in this research was whether the disruption effect would befound when more vivid irrelevant sentences were used in the stories.In Experiments 2 and 3 it was found that disruptive distractions were better

recalled than the other actions. In other words, evidence for the disruption effectwas found in this research. Nevertheless, the results of these experiments suggestthat the disruption effect may be more complex than originally believed. Incontrast to previous research, in these experiments recall of two different dis-ruptive actions was separated and assessed. In Experiment 2 it was found thatdisruptive distractions were considerably better recalled than obstacles. In fact,obstacles were not better recalled than the vivid irrelevant actions. Hence, thedisruption effect was found for distractions but not for obstacles. In order toexamine why the disruption effect was found for distractions but not for obstaclesin Experiment 2, we explored how distractions may have differed from theobstacles.First, distractions and obstacles by definition differ in how they interrupt the

story. However, research with adults has not found that such a difference greatlyaffects memory (Bower et al., 1979; Davidson, 1994). Also, as shown by theresults of Experiment 3, obstacles and distractions were recalled similarly. An-other possibility may be typicality, as the original distractions were rated lesstypical than the other actions including the obstacles. It was also found that moreconsequences were generated for the original distractions than for the obstacles.In order to separate the effects of typicality and the potential for each action toresult in particular consequences, the distractions were altered in the secondrecall experiment so that while the typicality ratings remained the same betweenthem and the original distractions, fewer consequences were generated by chil-dren for the new distractions.Importantly, it was found that these new distractions were less well recalled

than the original distractions. This finding is consistent with research on adulttext processing, which has shown that the number of real or possible connectionsaffects recall of story sentences, with more connections leading to greater recall(e.g., Davidson, 1994; Trabasso & van den Broek, 1985; van den Broek, 1988).In fact, recent research with adults has shown that disruptions are better recalledif the connection is a potential one rather than a real one, and the reader has toinfer a connection between other story statements (Davidson, 1994). Such a



finding is consistent with an elaboration hypothesis suggested in text processingresearch with adults.Specifically, Myers and his colleagues have found that sentence pairs with the

strongest connections (e.g., stated connections in the story) do not necessarilyproduce the best memory (Myers, Shinjo, & Duffy, 1987; Duffy, Shinjo, &Myers, 1990). Instead, memory is better for moderately related pairs. Accordingto the elaboration hypothesis, individuals more readily generate an elaboration,or causal bridge inference, between moderately related pairs than highly relatedpairs. Myers et al. (1987) suggest that it is this extra elaboration or inference thataids recall. As shown by the results of the present research, even young children’smemory for disruptions may be affected by these potential or real connections,and the inferences that may be drawn from them.It should also be noted that in both experiments script actions were better

recalled than pallid irrelevant actions. It appears that pallid irrelevant actionswere at a particular disadvantage; not only did they not disrupt the goal of thestory, they were also fairly mundane and routine. In other words, and consistentwith the schema confirmation-deployment model (Farrar & Goodman, 1990;1992; Goodman, 1981), the pallid actions were not particularly discrepant fromchildren’s script. However, it may be that while the pallid irrelevant actions wererelatively routine they were not scripted actions. Therefore, script knowledgewould not have benefitted their recall as much as it presumably would have forscript actions, and thus pallid irrelevant actions were not as well recalled as scriptactions.Interestingly, few developmental differences were found across experiments.

Although younger children did not rate script actions as frequently occurring asolder children, this did not appear to impact their recall. However, the lack ofdevelopmental differences may have been due to the fact that the youngestchildren in the present research were at least six years of age, and therefore, theirscript knowledge for the events was fairly well established. Previous research onthe development of young children’s script knowledge supports this assumption(e.g., Nelson, 1986; Nelson & Gruendal, 1981). Although developmental differ-ences may be found with children younger than 5 or 6, given the difficulty of thefree recall task, this possibility was not explored in the present research. How-ever, presentation of the information in a different medium, such as real-lifescript reenactment (following the procedures of Farrar & Goodman, 1992), orpresenting the stories on videotape, may enable the assessment of younger chil-dren’s memory.Finally, although the overall proportions of information recalled did not differ

between experiments, the make-up of the stories appeared to affect recall, to theextent that when a particularly memorable disruption was in the story (Experi-ment 2) recall for the other actions was actually poorer than when a less memo-rable disruption was used (Experiment 3).In summary, several findings were apparent in the present research. First, even



6-year-olds’ recall of disruptive actions appeared to be affected by the extent towhich the action disrupted the story, even when those consequences were notactually in the story but were inferred. Importantly, these results are compatiblewith the findings of Ackerman and his colleagues, who have found that youngchildren are more competent in making and using inferences in their understand-ing of story information than originally believed (e.g., Ackerman, 1992; Acker-man & Jackson, 1991). Furthermore, the finding that vivid irrelevant actionswere consistently better recalled than pallid irrelevant actions suggests that thedescriptiveness or vividness of an action not only affects adults’ recall of proseactions (e.g., Bower et al., 1979; Davidson, 1994), but also young children’srecall as well (see also Ratner & Foley, in press).Taken together, the results of the present experiments suggest that children’s

memory for typical and atypical story actions is more complicated than previousresearch has suggested. Specifically, the present findings provide evidence thatnot all atypical actions are equally well recalled. This is in contrast to theassumptions of the SP + T hypothesis that suggest that all atypical actions aretagged in the same manner and with the same strength to the story representation.As research continues, it is expected that additional factors, particularly thosethat may be coupled with the disruption effect (e.g., emotionality), will also beshown to be important in the recall of atypical actions.

APPENDIX

Story Texts

Version A: Grocery StoreJulie and her brother John went to the grocery store with their parents. (S) They went inside

and got a shopping cart. (V-I) Julie took off her coat because she was very hot and uncomfort-able. (O-D) They couldn’t get down one store aisle because people were blocking it. (P-I) Johnlooked at some magazines. (P-I) Julie looked at some cereal boxes. (D-D) John dropped a cartonof eggs: (S) They got in a checkout lane to pay for their groceries. (V-I) John tied his new shoeswith the bright green laces. They paid for their groceries and went home.

Version B: Grocery StoreJulie and her brother John went to the grocery store with their parents. (S) They went inside

and got a shopping cart. (P-I) Julie took off her coat. (O-D) They couldn’t get down one storeaisle because people were blocking it. (V-I) John looked at some really exciting magazinesabout race cars. (V-I) Julie looked at the really neat prizes in some cereal boxes. (D-D) Johndropped a carton of eggs. (S) They got in a checkout lane to pay for their groceries. (P-I) Johntied his shoes. They paid for their groceries and went home.

Version A: MoviesMike and his sister Heather went to the movies with their parents. (S) They got in line to buy

tickets, and popcorn and candy. (V-I) Heather noticed that the carpet was red and incrediblydirty and stained. (V-I) They saw two people in the corner screaming at each other. (D-D) Theirdad tripped and his popcorn flew everywhere. (P-I) They saw a boy from school. (P-I) Mikesaid the screen was big. (O-D) Some people blocked their view and they couldn’t see very well.(S) They watched the movie. After the movie they drove home.



Version B: MoviesMike and his sister Heather went to the movies with their parents. (S) They got in line to buy

tickets, and popcorn and candy. (P-I) Heather noticed that the carpet was red. (P-I) They sawtwo people in the corner. (D-D) Their dad tripped and his popcorn flew everywhere. (V-I) Theysaw a boy from school who was very funny and they both liked a lot. (V-I) Mike said thescreen was the biggest and best he had ever seen. (O-D) Some people blocked their view andthey couldn’t see very well. (S) They watched the movie. After the movie they drove home.

Note. (S) script action; (P-I) pallid-irrelevant action, (V-I) vivid-irrelevant action, (O-D) obstacle-disruptive action, (D-D) distractive-disruptive action. In Experiment 2, the modified distractive-disruptive actions were ‘‘John dropped an apple on the floor’’ (grocery store) and ‘‘Their dad trippedand a piece of popcorn fell from his box’’ (movies).

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RECEIVED: February 28, 1994; REVISED: December 13, 1994.


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Children's Memory for Atypical Actions in Script-Based Stories: An Examination of the Disruption Effect