Memory Development in Children

I. The example of eyewitness testimony

A. characteristics
1. 100,000 children testify each year; 40% < 5 years old

2. failures to remember, misremember, & combine experiences
 

a. especially a concern with leading questions


B. errors as a function of encoding
1. verbatim vs. gist knowledge
a. greater emphasis on verbatim information
2. a function of their lesser knowledge a. 3 yr. olds' vs. 7 yr. olds' responses to "Did the nurse lick your knee?" (Gordon et al., 1991)

b. Sam Stone stories (Leichtman & Ceci, 1995)
1. repeated exposure to stereotyped stories led to errors

2. 3 yr. olds: 72% he did it; 44% saw him; 21% kept

3. 5 & 6 yr olds. less likely to make the claims

C. errors as a function of storage
1. suggestibility is greater for children under 6

2. reality monitoring & preschoolers

3. forgetting is much more rapid

D. errors as a function of retrieval
1. asking questions after an event seems to prevent forgetting

2. recall vs. recognition
3. encouragement to think deeply about an event

4. the number of times questioned

E. What develops?


II. Basic Capabilities

A. Recognition & retention in infancy and early childhood
1. explicit vs. implicit memories
a. recollection vs. behavior

b. implicit from birth

c. explicit memory from about 8 months on

1. development of the prefrontal cortex & amygdala
2. association
a. present at birth, tested with operant conditioning
3. recognition
a. habituation paradigms & infancy
1. Fantz et al. (1975) w/ 2 month olds

            a. prefer new items even after 2 weeks

2. what is recognized (Strauss & Cohen, 1978)

a. 5 month olds were habituated to 4-attribute shapes

b. 0 min: all 4; 15 min: shape & color; 24 hrs: form

b. old vs. new recognition
1. 2 yrs: recognition > adult recall

2. 4 yrs: 100 - 95% correct with 25 pictures

B. Insight, generalization, & integration (Rovee-Collier & others)
1. in 3 month olds with the mobile task
a. abrupt learning, but very specific

b. can learn to generalize with multiple mobile presentations

c. recall with reinstatement w/in 3 days

2. inhibition
a. frontal lobe development
1. increase in synapses @ 1 year and btn 4 and 7 yrs

2. inhibition of responses in the A-not B task

b. "Simon says" & other like tasks
1. difficult at 4-5 years

2. success at 7 years old

3. commands should stress "do" rather than "stop"

C. Infantile amnesia 1. Freud’s thesis

2. other possibilities: maturation of the frontal lobes, influence of the social world, changes in coding

 D. Processing capacity
1. memory span
a. span approximately matches a child's age up to 7 items
2. Case
a. differentiated between storage vs. processing capacity
E. Processing speed
1. speed increase with age (3 sec/operation @ 5 yrs. vs. 1 sec for 14 yr olds)

2. not necessarily a function of practice or use of strategies

F. Evaluation
1. very important for understanding memory development
III. Strategies
 
A. defined
1. "cognitive or behavioral strategies that are under the control of the subject and are employed so as to enhance performance"

2. characteristics of strategy use in children

  a. not used all the time when first acquired

b. vary based on experience
 

 B. Search
  1. studies a. looking, pointing, named object during 4 min delay when hidden

b. but unlikely to be used in confusing settings (hidden under similar objects) for 2 vs. 3 yr olds

c. 8 year olds spontaneously use markers, but 5 year olds need hints

 C. Rehearsal
1. 5 vs. 10 year olds
a. less likely to rehearse spontaneously

b. but will show improvement with rehearsal

2. Ornstein et al. (1975) - isolated vs. cumulative rehearsal
D. Organization
1. less likely for 5 & 6 year olds

2. but again, trial-to-trial variability

E. Selective Attention (deploying cognitive resources)
1. increases between 3 and 8
a. Miller's selective attention experiments
1. younger children will search all boxes

2. most advanced will selectively search and remember more

2. systematicity of deployment
a. Vurpillot's comparison studies
F. Explanations
1. mediational vs. production deficiency
a. neither are adequate
2. cost-benefits analysis
a. strategy use increases w/ monetary rewards & easy tasks
3. utilizational deficiency
a. cost of mental resources while learning strategy use
G. Evaluation
1. since training does not always lead to use, perhaps metacognition is relevant
IV. Metacognition
A. Explicit metacognitive knowledge
1. age related differences
a. knowledge about tasks, strategies, & people

b. acquired between ages 5 and 10

2. fallibility of memory
a. most children beyond 6 yrs know they forget
3. 1/2 of first graders know
a. gist is easier than verbatim

b. recognition is easier than recall

4. but weak relation with metamemoric knowledge and performance
B. Implicit metacognitive knowledge
 
1. fewer age related differences

2. examples

a. self-monitoring of language by 2 year-olds

b. feeling-of-knowing by 4 and 5 yr olds

1. could accurately predict their recognition
3. but far from perfect
a. monitoring one's comprehension
1. good and older readers look for the incongruencies
a. reread or read more slowly
2. younger and poorer readers are less likely to reread
b. choosing how much to study
1. not until 12 and 13 years old a. focus more attention on unmastered material

b. 7 year olds focus on everything, 9 year olds on what they didn't know; = performance
C. Evaluation
1. yet, transfer of strategies is rare
V. Content knowledge (knowledge base)
A. Quantity remembered
1. representative studies
a. chess knowledge
1. Chi (1978) w/ 10 year old chess masters

2. Schneider et al. (1993) chess expertise rather than age

b. cartoons, etc. (Lindberg 1980, 1991)

c. soccer knowledge & IQ (Schneider et al., 1989)

1. though high IQ children may acquire knowledge faster
B. Quality remembered
1. influences what is and is not remembered
a. e.g., inferences: creature w/ broken wing = bird
2. script knowledge
a. present by the age of 3
1. day care routine, birthday parties, daily routine, etc.

2. but preschoolers may misremember depending on frequency

a. pay before eating

b. by age 7, greater discrimination about specifics

3. effects of stories & questions
a. seem to be relevant in forming scripts

b. story schemas: setting, event, response, goal, attempt, resolution

1. 3 yr olds: no goals or internal reactions, add unrelated details

2. 4 yr olds: more actions, but still not many goals/reactions

3. at 5: all parts are included

C. Influence on other processes
1. basic processes
a. encoding is more efficient with familiar info

b. the more familiar the content, the more can be held in WM (chunking)

2. strategies
a. organization is more evident with familiar categories

b. 8 yr olds with familiar = recall of 11 yr olds with unfamiliar

c. could apply new strategies more easily to familiar content

3. metacognition
a. child chess experts better predict how much they could remember
D. Possible mechanisms
1. encoding of distinctive features

2. spreading activation (connectionist model)

E. Evaluation
1. seems to be a large component of age differences in memory