The effects of documentation on young children's memory

• Exposure to documentation or worksheets as reminders increases memory for factual information.
• Children exposed to documentation produce more on-topic speech than those exposed to worksheets.
• There exist potential benefits of documentation for preschool and kindergarten classroom performance.

A central aspect of the Reggio approach to early childhood education is documentation, in which educators observe, record, and display children's work. Educational anecdotes and developmental theory suggest that documentation may facilitate children's memory; the current study explored this possibility empirically. Sixty-three preschool/kindergarten children experienced a novel learning event. Two days later, children were reminded with either documentation or worksheets of event details and the factual information that had been presented, or they were not reminded. Three weeks later, children completed a memory interview that included episodic and semantic measures. Children in the documentation and worksheet conditions remembered more factual information than those in the no-reminder condition. Children in the documentation condition produced more on-topic speech than those in the worksheet condition during reminding and a subsequent learning session. Potential benefits of documentation for classroom performance are discussed.