Lifespan Development. Tara L. Kuther

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СКАЧАТЬ turns over one card and exclaims, “I’ve seen this one before. I know where it is!” She quickly selects its duplicate by turning over a second card from an array of cards. Shana recognizes a card she has seen before and recalls its location. Children’s memory for specific information, such as the location of items, lists of words or numbers, and directions, can be studied using tasks that examine recognition memory and recall memory. Recognition memory, the ability to recognize a stimulus one has encountered before, is nearly perfect in 4- and 5-year-old children, but they are much less proficient in recall memory, the ability to generate a memory of a stimulus encountered before without seeing it again (Myers & Perlmutter, 2014).

      Why do young children perform so poorly in recall tasks? Young children are not very effective at using memory strategies, cognitive activities that make us more likely to remember. For example, rehearsal, repeating items over and over, is a strategy that older children and adults use to recall lists of stimuli. Children do not spontaneously and reliably apply rehearsal until after the first grade (Bjorklund & Myers, 2015). Preschool-age children can be taught strategies, but they generally do not transfer their learning and apply it to new tasks (Titz & Karbach, 2014). This utilization deficiency seems to occur because of their limited working memories and difficulty inhibiting irrelevant stimuli. They cannot apply the strategy at the same time as they have to retain both the material to be learned and the strategy to be used. Instead, new information competes with the information the child is attempting to recall (Aslan & Bäuml, 2010). Overall, advances in executive function, working memory, and attention predict strategy use (Stone, Blumberg, Blair, & Cancelli, 2016).

      However, young children do not always show more poor performance relative to adults. In one study, parents read a novel rhyming verse and a word list as their 4-year-old children’s bedtime story on 10 consecutive days. When asked to recall the verse, the 4-year-old children outperformed their parents and a set of young adults who also listened to the verse (Király, Takács, Kaldy, & Blaser, 2017). The children and adults did not differ in the ability to recall the gist of the verse. Unlike adults, young children are immersed in a culture of verse and rely on oral transmission of information, likely underlying their skill relative to adults.

      Memory for Scripts

      Young children remember familiar repeated everyday experiences, like the process of eating dinner, taking a bath, or going to nursery school or preschool, as scripts, or descriptions of what occurs in a particular situation. When young children begin to use scripts, they remember only the main details. A 3-year-old might describe a trip to a restaurant as follows: “You go in, eat, then pay.” These early scripts include only a few acts but usually are recalled in the correct order (Bauer, 1996). As children grow older and gain cognitive competence, scripts become more elaborate. Consider a 5-year-old child’s explanation of a trip to a restaurant: “You go in, you can sit at a booth or a table, then you tell the waitress what you want, you eat, if you want dessert, you can have some, then you go pay, and go home” (Hudson, Fivush, & Kuebli, 1992). Scripts are an organizational tool that help children understand and remember repeated events and help them to predict future events. However, scripts may inhibit memory for new details. For example, in one laboratory study, children were presented with a script of the same series of events repeated in order multiple times as well as a single alternative event. Preschoolers were less likely than older children to spontaneously recall and provide a detailed account of the event (Brubacher, Glisic, Roberts, & Powell, 2011).

      This child demonstrates a script as she explains the process of going to a restaurant and ordering from a menu.

      Inti St Clair/Blend/Newscom

      Autobiographical Memory

      Autobiographical memory refers to memory of personally meaningful events that took place at a specific time and place in one’s past (Bauer, 2015). Autobiographical memory emerges as children become proficient in language and executive function and develops steadily from 3 to 6 years of age (Nieto, Ros, Ricarte, & Latorre, 2018). Young children report fewer memories for specific events than do older children and adults (Baker-Ward, Gordon, Ornstein, Larus, & Clubb, 1993). But by age 3, they are able to retrieve and report specific memories, especially those that have personal significance, are repeated, or are highly stressful (Nuttall, Valentino, Comas, McNeill, & Stey, 2014). For example, in one study, children who were at least 26 months old at the time of an accidental injury and visit to the emergency room accurately recalled the details of these experiences even after a 2-year delay (Goodman, Rudy, Bottoms, & Aman, 1990). Eight-year-old children have been found to accurately remember events that occurred when they were as young as 3½ years of age (Goodman & Aman, 1990).

      Events that are unique or new, such as a trip to the circus, are better recalled; 3-year-old children will recall them for a year or longer (Fivush, Hudson, & Nelson, 1983). Frequent events, however, tend to blur together. Young children are better at remembering things they did than things they simply watched. For example, one study examined 5-year-old children‘s recall of an event they observed, were told about, or experienced. A few days later, the children who actually experienced the event were more likely to recall details in a more accurate and organized way and to require fewer prompts (Murachver, Pipe, Gordon, Owens, & Fivush, 1996).

      The way adults talk with the child about a shared experience can influence how well the child will remember it (Haden & Fivush, 1996). Parents with an elaborative conversational style discuss new aspects of an experience, provide more information to guide a child through a mutually rewarding conversation, and affirm the child’s responses. They may ask questions, expand children’s responses, and help the child tell their story. Three-year-olds of parents who use an elaborative style engage in longer conversations about events, remember more details, and tend to remember the events better at ages 5 and 6 (Fivush, 2011).

      Applying Developmental Science

      Children’s Suggestibility

      Repeated questioning about an event that may or may not have happened may increase suggestibility in children.

      Gordon Scammell / Alamy Stock Photo

      The accuracy of children’s memory, especially their vulnerability to suggestion, is an important topic because children as young as 3 years have been called upon to relate their memories of events that they have experienced or witnessed, including abuse, maltreatment, and domestic violence (Pantell & Committee on Psychosocial Aspects of Child and Family Health, 2017). Young children can recall much about their experiences, often material that is relevant and accurate (Cauffman, Shulman, Bechtold, & Steinberg, 2015). How suggestible are young children? Can we trust their memories?

      Research suggests that repeated questioning may increase suggestibility in children (La Rooy, Lamb, & Pipe, 2011). For example, in one study, preschoolers were questioned every week about events that had either happened or not happened to them; by the 11th week, nearly two thirds of the children falsely reported having experienced an event (Ceci, Huffman, Smith, & Loftus, 1994). Preschool-age children may be more vulnerable to suggestion than school-age children or adults (Brown & Lamb, 2015). When children were asked if they could remember several events, including a fictitious instance of getting their finger caught in a mousetrap, almost none of them initially recalled these events. However, after repeated СКАЧАТЬ