This study was undertaken to identify mechanisms which orchestrate children's memory development. First, several lines of research were replicated which have examined the development of children's rehearsal skills either independently or as mediated by factors such as, language proficiency and mental effort. Secondly, how language proficiency interacts with processing resources in the development of rehearsal skills was directly assessed.; As hypothesized, language proficiency emerged as a significant discriminator of rehearsal use with higher levels of language development associated with spontaneous strategy use. Non-verbal reasoning, however, was not a significant predictor of rehearsal use. The mental effort requirement of cumulative rehearsal was also found to mediate children's strategy use with rehearsers, of all ages, expending less mental effort in rehearsing familiar stimuli than non-rehearsers. The hypothesis that language proficiency, as expressed through automatized language, interacts with the mental effort requirements for rehearsal was supported by the finding that more mental effort was expended in rehearsing the unfamiliar words. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)
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