chapter 14 - memory in childhood

two-stage theory

- absolute amnesia (pre 2 yrs of age) as a result of lack of cognitive self - relative amnesia (b/w 2-6 yrs) due to lang development

maturation and cognitive processes

- brain structures associated with implicit memory (cerebellum, striatum, brain stem) develop earlier - regions associated w declarative memory (hippocampus, parahippocampus) are also formed at birth or matures rapidly - but there is prolonged postnatal maturation and addition of neurons to the dentate gryus

declarative vs implicit memory

- declarative starts off less developed, but it then begins to improve rapidly - implicit memory may show some slight improvements w age

deferred imitation task

- experimenter produces a sequence w objects - delay of varying lengths - the infant then tries to imitate the action

amnesia filter

- if inds w amnesia show little to no impairment on the task, then it's likely implicit - if inds w amnesia perform substantially worse on the task, then it's likely declarative

Simcock & Hayne's (2003) magic shrinking machine

- included nonverbal memory tests revealed hidden memory retention by: - relying less on lang - providing more retrieval cues to children

traditional model of memory in infancy

infants (<1 yr) capable of only simple implicit learning and memory for perceptual and motor skills - associative learning and memory - younger infants surpass older infants when learning associative info

neurogenic hypothesis

"High neurogenesis levels negatively regulate the ability to form enduring memories, most likely by replacing synaptic connections in pre-existing hippocampal memory circuits" (Josselyn & Frank, 2012)

Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm

- participants are given a list of words and remember a word that fits the category but wasn't there - false memories arise from the same constructive process that produces true memories.

how to maximize accuracy

- reduce pressure of social compliance > avoid leading questions at any point in the questioning process - train effective source monitoring techniques - reinstate the encoding context > according to the encoding specificity principle, memory should be maximal when the encoding context and the retrieval context match

explanations for infantile amnesia

- repression - cognitive self - social cultural theory

test (mobile conjugate reinforcement paradigm)

- the ribbon is detached from the mobile - if they kick more than baseline in the presence of the mobile, they remember the connection - retention interval b/w learning and test can be manipulated

repression

Freud proposed that infantile amnesia occurs through repression, w threat-related thoughts being banished to the unconscious mind problems w theory: - no evidence supports it - fails to explain why adults can't remember positive or neutral events from childhood

sensory pre-conditioning

an association b/w two stimuli that is established prior to the start of conditioning

children as witnesses

are children more suggestible than adults? yes bc younger children are more biased than are older children by leading questions: - questions that carry with them an implication as to the correct answer - 10- to 12-year-olds are no more suggestible than adults

ecological model of memory in infancy

basic processes do not change w age - what infants learn differs from what is learned by slightly older children - prior to crawling "v young infants spontaneously and rapidly associate stimuli that merely appear together in their surround" (Rovee-Collier & Cuevas, 2009)

earliest memories

children ages 5-9 yrs earliest memories were from 1.5 yrs of age

why infantile amnesia?

cognitive self approach and social cultural theory both have supportive evidence and aren't mutually exclusive - the onset of autobiographical memory could depend on the emergence of self - subsequent memory expression is heavily influenced by social, cultural, and linguistic factors

verbatim memory

contain accurate and detailed info about to-be-remembered stimuli - reflects the actual experience - improves over childhood (word-for-word recall)

declarative memory development

continues to improve into childhood due to interrelated factors: 1. basic capacity in stm/wm increases over the yrs (subvocally rehearse faster/more) 2. learn and use new strategies (rehearsal) 3. accumulate more knowledge (helps form schemas to organize memories) 4. develop better metamemory (helps children select the best strategy to use) (Siegler, 1998)

deferred imitation task and declarative memory

evidence that deferred imitation requires declarative/ explicit memory: - adults w amnesia show little evidence of deferred imitation - preverbal infants who imitated were later able to verbalize their performance > only declarative memories are likely accessible to lang

evidence for cognitive self approach

evidence, controlling for lang: - self recognizers had better memory for personal events - pre-self recognizers didn't have good memory for personal events why can 2 yr olds remember events for months, but not into adulthood? - young children don't engage in much rehearsal

gist memory

general semantic info about to-be-remembered stimuli - reflects a general understanding of an experience - improves over childhood (children grow to extract meaning from info) (a generalized, rather than specific, memory of common occurrences)

parameter filter

if the memory is affected by factors known to influence declarative tasks in adults, then it's also likely to be declarative (changes in study time, retention interval, contextual changes) - limited learning and memory abilities - abilities improve linearly w age

content knowledge

immediate knowledge of chess positions and digits in children (mean age 10 yrs 6 months) w expert knowledge of chess and in adults w limited knowledge of chess

mobile conjugate reinforcement paradigm

important to avoid understanding baby's memory by using what interests them - could be due to operant conditioning (baby kicking mobile hanging over crib - reward) 3 phases: - baseline - learning - test

studying memory in childhood

infantile amnesia and autobiographical memory in children is hard to study bc: - difficult to verify memories from childhood > therefore, researchers focus on dateable, verifiable events (birth of a sibling) - hard to know whether childhood memories are genuine recollections or are reconstructed from stories and photos > genuine memories tend to be more visual, less verbal, more emotional, and more complete

memory abilities in infancy

infants can't tell us what they remember and don't follow verbal instructions how can we assess their memory? - tasks require motor, rather than verbal responses > but infants' motor responses are also limited - it's hard to establish whether they're consciously aware of their memories > are they declarative or implicit?

learning (mobile conjugate reinforcement paradigm)

infants learn that kicking (response) causes the mobile to move (reinforcement)

declarative memory in mobile conjugate reinforcement paradigm

infants' performance is determined by factors that are more important in declarative than implicit memories (participant's age, retention interval, context)

metamemory

knowledge about one's memory and how it works - increases over development > younger children tend to dramatically overestimate their memory span

implicit memory

memories we don't deliberately remember or reflect on consciously

autobiographical memory in infancy

memory in young children is typically assessed by verbal report - but they have limited verbal skills > research based on verbal report likely underestimates young children's memory

cognitive self approach

must have a sense-of-self to form autobiographical memories - develops around 2 yrs of age > visual-self recognition: recognizing one's reflection in the mirror - provides a schema for autobiographical memories

memory strategies

older children are more likely than younger ones to employ memory strategies evidence comes from categorized list recall: - adults: rehearse words by category, words are recalled by category, organizational strategies lead to better recall - children aged 8-17: older children used more sorting strategies, older children clustered more, both these strategies increased steadily over development

gist memory traces

older children form more gist memory traces this is generally advantageous, but can lead to errors when: - the learning task leads older children to produce more gist memories than younger children do - the memory task requires verbatim recall/ recognition - greater gist memory increases the likelihood of false recall/ recognition of info v similar in meaning to the to-be-remembered info studied w DRM paradigm

learned kicking behavior (mobile conjugate reinforcement paradigm)

perceptual discrimination: - if the babies were trained on a mobile w yellow blocks, they won't respond to a mobile w metal butterflies instead - but if they're trained on diff mobiles, they would then generalize the kicking response to novel mobiles (as if they learned the mobile concept) context-sensitivity: - if an infant was trained in a crib but tested in the kitchen, they wouldn't kick - if the crib's decor was changed, the amount of kicking would be reduced

social cultural theory

pre-linguistic memories are hard to express using lang later - lang skills at the time of an event dictate what they can recall subsequently - children whose parents have an elaborative reminiscing style later report more and fuller childhood memories (when mother-child convos abt a museum trip were freely interacting, rather than practical, children remembered more)

baseline (mobile conjugate reinforcement paradigm)

record how often the baby kicks when the foot isn't attached to the mobile

declarative memory

refers to memories which can be consciously recalled such as facts and events (explicit memory)

why are young children susceptible?

social compliance - they yield to authority figures - they lack social support to stand up for their views cognitive deficits - they come to believe their distorted reports because of limitations in cognitive processing & lang abilities - impairment in source monitoring

lack of implicit improvements

why? compared to declarative memory, implicit memory involves more basic processes - implicit memory is relatively unaffected by other cognitive skills like wm capacity, content knowledge, strategy, and metamemory