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• We integrate memory development research by focusing on shared methodology. • We highlight the value of a mapping review approach. • Gaps in the memory development literature can be prioritized for the future. • Different theories generate data that can be integrated. • Mapping reviews offer a solution to building a cumulative science in psychology. Cumulative science hinges on consolidating empirical evidence. However, both narrative reviews and meta -analyses often restrict integration by using construct labels in searches, which vary greatly across traditions and eras in psychology. A complementary approach is the mapping review, more common in other disciplines, which focuses on operational definitions and experimental design. Here, we pioneered using this approach in experimental psychology, applying it to memory development. We classified 506 publications in the last 5 decades using 16 design features and identified methodologically convergent work that originated from different theoretical frameworks. New insights emerge from this approach. First, characterizing the relative data density along each dimension of experimental design identifies where future research is most necessary. Second, we linked relevant evidence previously separated by nonoverlapping construct labels. Third, we illustrated the potential application of this technique as a precursor to subsequent research syntheses with an analysis of the development of pattern separation (also called mnemonic discrimination). To facilitate the process of literature integration and identification of methodological overlap, we have created a freely available interactive web application using the current database. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the authors introduce the concept that people's earliest and defining product memories can be used as a projective tool to help managers more fully understand consumers' relationships to their products. The authors use a study on three generations of automobile consumers to illustrate how these memories symbolize the consumer--brand relationship and how they can be used to gain insights into brand meaning. The findings indicate that people's earliest and defining experiences have an important influence on current and future preferences in predictable ways across the consumer life cycle. These memory experiences are symbolic to the consumer and represent a new lens for viewing brand meaning, which complements the toolbox of extant research methods. The authors provide details about this technique for managers who are searching for methods that recognize that consumers coproduce brand meanings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are important public health concerns, with links to higher prevalence rates of both health-risk behaviors and physical health difficulties in adulthood. Research has demonstrated an association between early adversity and long-term health-risk behavior development. The current study assessed the role of emotion dysregulation and facets of impulsivity as potential mediators in the relation between ACEs and general health-risk behaviors, including alcohol-related consequences and risky sexual behavior. College students (N = 668) completed online questionnaires that assessed history of ACEs, emotion regulation difficulties, impulsivity under extreme affect, and current engagement in health-risk behaviors. Emotion dysregulation and impulsivity under extreme positive emotion, but not negative emotion, demonstrated a significant serial mediation between ACEs and alcohol-related consequences. Results also suggest that emotion dysregulation mediates the relation between early adversity and all three outcomes (i.e., overall engagement in maladaptive behavior, alcohol-related consequences, and risky sexual behavior). Impulsivity under positive or negative affect did not demonstrate a mediation effect on the three outcomes. Results of this study highlight the importance of assessing for emotion regulation skills when working with young adults with histories of adversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Autonomic reactivity is implicated in stress response and social engagement - both key components of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) - but few studies have examined autonomic reactivity in pediatric samples, and no known studies have examined physiological synchrony among children with PTSD and caregivers. In a sample of 247 young children (94 girls, 153 boys), most (85%) of whom had exposure to trauma and 40% who met criteria for PTSD, we examined children's patterns of respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) at baseline and in response to a memory recall task, as well as correspondence between parents' and children's RSA. Children with PTSD demonstrated significantly higher reactivity than other groups during their recollection of a traumatic memory, but not during other memory tasks. Regarding synchrony, caregivers' and children's RSA were more significantly and positively correlated during the trauma recall task among children who had had exposure to a potentially traumatic event but did not meet PTSD criteria, suggesting physiological synchrony may be protective in contexts of trauma. Overall, findings demonstrate physiological reactivity differences among young children with PTSD. While more work is needed to understand the meaning of parent-child physiological synchrony, these data suggest that children's psychopathology is associated with physiological synchrony processes among young children with exposure to trauma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is the first reported study of children's use of two metacognitive strategies, recollection rejection and diagnostic monitoring, to reject misinformation. Recollection rejection involves the retrieval of details that disqualify an event, whereas diagnostic monitoring involves the failure to retrieve expected details. First (n = 56, age 7 years) and third graders (n = 52, age 9 years) witnessed a staged classroom interaction involving common and bizarre accidents, were presented with misinformation about the source of these events, and took a memory test. Both age groups used recollection rejection, but third graders were more effective. There was little evidence that diagnostic monitoring influenced responses for bizarre events, potentially because these events were not sufficiently bizarre in the context of the stereotype induction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective The study evaluated whether there exists a difference/relation in the way four different memory skills (memory score, sequencing score, memory span, & sequencing span) are processed through the auditory modality, visual modality and combined modalities. Methods Four memory skills were evaluated on 30 typically developing children aged 7 years and 8 years across three modality conditions (auditory, visual, & auditory-visual). Analogous auditory and visual stimuli were presented to evaluate the three modality conditions across the two age groups. Results The children obtained significantly higher memory scores through the auditory modality compared to the visual modality. Likewise, their memory scores were significantly higher through the auditory-visual modality condition than through the visual modality. However, no effect of modality was observed on the sequencing scores as well as for the memory and the sequencing span. A good agreement was seen between the different modality conditions that were studied (auditory, visual, & auditory-visual) for the different memory skills measures (memory scores, sequencing scores, memory span, & sequencing span). A relatively lower agreement was noted only between the auditory and visual modalities as well as between the visual and auditory-visual modality conditions for the memory scores, measured using Bland-Altman plots. Conclusions The study highlights the efficacy of using analogous stimuli to assess the auditory, visual as well as combined modalities. The study supports the view that the performance of children on different memory skills was better through the auditory modality compared to the visual modality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The receptive language measure information-carrying word (ICW) level, is used extensively by speech and language therapists in the UK and Ireland. Despite this it has never been validated via its relationship to any other relevant measures. This study aims to validate the ICW measure by investigating the relationship between the receptive ICW score of children with specific language impairment (SLI) and their performance on standardized memory and language assessments. Twenty-seven children with SLI, aged between 5;07 and 8;11, completed a sentence comprehension task in which the instructions gradually increased in number of ICWs. The children also completed subtests from The Working Memory Test Battery for children and The Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals– 4. Results showed that there was a significant positive relationship between both language and memory measures and children’s ICW score. While both receptive and expressive language were significant in their contribution to children’s ICW score, the contribution of memory was solely determined by children’s working memory ability. ICW score is in fact a valid measure of the language ability of children with SLI. However therapists should also be cognisant of its strong association with working memory when using this construct in assessment or intervention methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adults’ common beliefs about child sexual abuse and disclosure were explored. Participants (N = 670) were questioned about key areas of child sexual abuse that could affect decision-making processes of jurors evaluating child sexual abuse cases. These areas included victim and perpetrator characteristics, medical and behavioral indicators of child sexual abuse, memories for the event, and disclosure of the event. The scientific literature pertaining to these same areas are reviewed. While individual beliefs were consistent with some areas of the scientific literature (e.g., victim and perpetrator characteristics), they strongly contrasted the literature in other important areas (e.g., memories for the event, indicators of child sexual abuse, and the likelihood of denial and recantation). Implications, including the option of providing expert testimony to reduce discrepancies, are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article explains the cognitive dynamics theory of visual working memory as it is implemented in a formal model. Topics covered include theories of development in the change detection and change-preference tasks, the difference in the formation of memory representations and the influence of memory on behavior, and the key components of the cognitive dynamics account of performance in the change-preference and change detection tasks.

Working memory is a vital cognitive skill that underlies a broad range of behaviors. Higher cognitive functions are reliably predicted by working memory measures from two domains: children's performance on complex span tasks, and infants’ performance in looking paradigms. Despite the similar predictive power across these research areas, theories of working memory development have not connected these different task types and developmental periods. The current project takes a first step toward bridging this gap by presenting a process‐oriented theory, focusing on two tasks designed to assess visual working memory capacity in infants (the change‐preference task) versus children and adults (the change detection task). Previous studies have shown inconsistent results, with capacity estimates increasing from one to four items during infancy, but only two to three items during early childhood. A probable source of this discrepancy is the different task structures used with each age group, but prior theories were not sufficiently specific to explain how performance relates across tasks. The current theory focuses on cognitive dynamics, that is, how memory representations are formed, maintained, and used within specific task contexts over development. This theory was formalized in a computational model to generate three predictions: 1) capacity estimates in the change‐preference task should continue to increase beyond infancy; 2) capacity estimates should be higher in the change‐preference versus change detection task when tested within individuals; and 3) performance should correlate across tasks because both rely on the same underlying memory system. I also tested a fourth prediction, that development across tasks could be explained through increasing real‐time stability, realized computationally as strengthening connectivity within the model. Results confirmed these predictions, supporting the cognitive dynamics account of performance and developmental changes in real‐time stability. The monograph concludes with implications for understanding memory, behavior, and development in a broader range of cognitive development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding how genes impact the brain’s functional activation for learning and cognition during development remains limited. We asked whether a common genetic variant in the BDNF gene (the Val66Met polymorphism) modulates neural activation in the young brain during a critical period for the emergence and maturation of the neural circuitry for reading. In animal models, the bdnf variation has been shown to be associated with the structure and function of the developing brain and in humans it has been associated with multiple aspects of cognition, particularly memory, which are relevant for the development of skilled reading. Yet, little is known about the impact of the Val66Met polymorphism on functional brain activation in development, either in animal models or in humans. Here, we examined whether the BDNF Val66Met polymorphism (dbSNP rs6265) is associated with children’s (age 6–10) neural activation patterns during a reading task (n = 81) using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), genotyping, and standardized behavioral assessments of cognitive and reading development. Children homozygous for the Val allele at the SNP rs6265 of the BDNF gene outperformed Met allele carriers on reading comprehension and phonological memory, tasks that have a strong memory component. Consistent with these behavioral findings, Met allele carriers showed greater activation in reading–related brain regions including the fusiform gyrus, the left inferior frontal gyrus and left superior temporal gyrus as well as greater activation in the hippocampus during a word and pseudoword reading task. Increased engagement of memory and spoken language regions for Met allele carriers relative to Val/Val homozygotes during reading suggests that Met carriers have to exert greater effort required to retrieve phonological codes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children's memory reports are often sparse, which increases the need for efficient interview methods. The present study investigated whether odour reinstatement can aid children's memory and increase the amount of information recalled from an experienced event. Children (N= 106, mean age 10 years, 8 months) experienced a magic show where a vanilla odour was present and were interviewed about their memory of the event either one week, or six months, after the magic show. During the interview, half of the children re-experienced the same vanilla odour. In contrast to studies on adult participants, no odour-reinstatement effect was found with the child participants in the present study. On the other hand, odour reinstatement reduced the children's ratings of how strong their emotions were during the event. Thus, odour reinstatement may affect different forensically relevant factors, and this should be considered in future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective The current study assessed the effects of acute exercise on three core executive functions in preadolescents and controlled for the moderating role of age. Design A true experimental design. Methods Thirty-four third-grade children and 53 fifth-grade preadolescents were randomly assigned into either an acute exercise group or a control group. The exercise protocol was designed for ecological validity and involved group jogging at moderate intensity for 30 min. Participants completed inhibition, working memory, and shifting-related executive function tasks prior to and following the treatment. Results Acute exercise facilitated performance in three executive function tasks in children in both grade groups; nevertheless, better performance was observed among the fifth graders in inhibition and working memory, but not in shifting, when compared with the third graders. Conclusion These findings suggest that acute exercise benefited three primary aspects of executive function in general, regardless of the preadolescent age group, whereas the distinct components of executive function had different developmental trajectories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two experiments were conducted to examine eyewitness memory in children and adolescents (9- to 15-years-old) with and without known histories of maltreatment (e.g., physical abuse, exposure to domestic violence). In Experiment 1, participants ( N = 35) viewed a positive film clip depicting a congenial interaction between family members. In Experiment 2, participants ( N = 31) watched a negative film clip in which a family argument was shown. Younger age and higher levels of trauma-related psychopathology significantly predicted commission errors to direct questions when the positive family interaction had been viewed, but not when the negative family interaction had been shown. Maltreatment history was not a significant unique predictor of memory performance for the positive or negative film clip. Implications for a scientific understanding of the effects of child maltreatment on memory are discussed. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When children witness or experience criminal events, the first people they go to are generally parents. Typically, no one else is privy to these conversations, and consequently little is known about their specific content. Research has shown that children can be quite accurate witnesses at times. However, they can also incorporate information from misleading and suggestive questions into their recall, and once their event memory has been changed, children may be unable to provide accurate reports. It is important then to assess parent-child discussions about crime. In the present study, 7- to 10-year-old children watched a video of a theft and talked about it with a parent immediately afterwards, and half had a second immediate interview with a researcher. All were interviewed by a different interviewer 1 week later. Results showed that: parents relied on direct and yes/no questions; children made errors of commission in response to questions; some parents asked leading or misleading questions; children incorporated all correct information from leading questions and nearly 40% of incorrect information from misleading questions; children provided additional information when interviewed by an interviewer 1 week later; and children remained relatively accurate in their descriptions but some were more accurate with parents than with an interviewer 1 week later. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined the effects of the verbal labels procedure and vocabulary skills on low-socioeconomic status (SES) preschool children's eyewitness memory. Children ( N =176) aged 3-5 years witnessed a conflict event and were then questioned about it in either a standard or a verbal labels interview. Findings revealed that children with higher rather than lower vocabulary skills produced more complete and accurate memories. Children who were given the verbal labels interview recalled more information, which included both correct and incorrect details. Overall, the verbal labels procedure did not improve children's performance on direct questions, but children with low vocabulary skills answered direct questions more accurately if they were given the verbal labels interview than when they were not. Implications of the findings for memory performance of low-SES children are discussed. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effects of parent-child conversation and object manipulation on children's learning, transfer of knowledge, and memory were examined in two museum exhibits and conversations recorded at home. Seventy-eight children ( Mage = 4.9) and their parents were randomly assigned to receive conversation cards featuring elaborative questions about exhibit objects, the physical objects themselves, both, or neither, before their exhibit visits. Dyads who received the cards engaged in more elaborative talk and joint nonverbal activities with objects in the first exhibit than those who did not. Dyads who received objects engaged in the most parent-child joint talk. Results also illustrate transfer of information across exhibits and from museum to home. Implications for understanding mechanisms of informal learning and transfer are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Associate learning is fundamental to the acquisition of knowledge and plays a critical role in the everyday functioning of the developing child, though the developmental course is still unclear. This study investigated the development of visual associate learning in 125 school age children using the Continuous Paired Associate Learning task. As hypothesized, younger children made more errors than older children across all memory loads and evidenced decreased learning efficiency as memory load increased. Results suggest that age-related differences in performance largely reflect continued development of executive function in the context of relatively developed memory processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A total of 48 preschoolers (ages 3, 4, and 5) received four tasks modelled after prior work designed to assess the development of “episodic foresight”. For each task, children encountered a problem in one room and, after a brief delay, were given the opportunity in a second room to select an item to solve the problem. Importantly, after selecting an item, children were queried about their memory for the problem. Age-related changes were found both in children's ability to select the correct item and their ability to remember the problem. However, when we controlled for children's memory for the problem, there were no longer significant age-related changes on the item choice measure. These findings suggest that age-related changes in children's performance on these tasks are driven by improvements in children's memory versus improvements in children's future-oriented thinking or “foresight” per se. Our results have important implications for how best to structure tasks to measure children's episodic foresight, and also for the relative role of memory in this task and in episodic foresight more broadly. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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The article discusses the capability of preschool children as witnesses in legal proceedings dealing with sexual abuse, focusing on psychological aspects that can influence the testimony of a child witness. Subjects discussed include suggestibility of children according to experimental research on preschool children, memory in children, and intellectual development. The author offers a credibility criteria to determine the difference between accounts of true and false events, such as space, time, and reproduction of conversations.

The link between emotion regulation and academic achievement is well documented. Less is known about specific emotion regulation strategies that promote learning. Six- to 13-year-olds ( N = 126) viewed a sad film and were instructed to reappraise the importance, reappraise the outcome, or ruminate about the sad events; another group received no regulation instructions. Children viewed an educational film, and memory for this was later assessed. As predicted, reappraisal strategies more effectively attenuated children's self-reported emotional processing. Reappraisal enhanced memory for educational details relative to no instructions. Rumination did not lead to differences in memory from the other instructions. Memory benefits of effective instructions were pronounced for children with poorer emotion regulation skill, suggesting the utility of reappraisal in learning contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In this paper we describe a special form of future thinking, termed “episodic foresight” and its relation with episodic and semantic memory. We outline the methodologies that have largely been developed in the last five years to assess this capacity in young children and non-human animals. Drawing on Tulving''s definition of episodic and semantic memory, we provide a critical analysis of the role that both types of memory might have on the episodic foresight tasks described in the literature. We conclude by highlighting some unanswered questions and suggesting future directions for research that could further our understanding of how memory is intimately connected to episodic foresight. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Field trips are effective because they situate learning and facilitate knowledge transfer, thereby influencing students learning attitudes, interests, and motivation. Variations in field trip configurations and the subsequent affective and cognitive influences provided the motivation for this study of Outside Day—an environmental education field trip for 6th-grade students. The participants were immediately postassessed on their attitudes toward the event and 1 month later assessed on their event activity recall. Results indicate the students held positive attitudes toward the field trip and recalled a hands-on orienteering activity most frequently. The discussion provides explanations and implications of findings. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Summary The effects of stress on memory were examined through a study of 33 3 to 12-year-old maltreated children removed from their biological parents by the Child Protective Services because of an emergency (acute) or normal (planned) care order. Children's stress levels were rated by a researcher present during the removal and children's memory of the removal investigated at a later time. The type of removal significantly predicted children's level of stress. 'Acute removal' children remembered more from high-stress phases of the removal than the 'planned removal' children. All children had more accurate memories of the low-stress phases. Details remembered were rated as central or peripheral; more central information was recalled than peripheral information. The 'acute removal' children recalled more peripheral information from the high-stress phases of the removal than the low-stress phases, a difference, which was not present for the 'planned removal' children. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: In this study, the authors investigated sentence comprehension and spatial working memory abilities in a sample of internationally adopted, postinstitutionalized (PI) children. The authors compared the performance of these PI children with that of an age-matched group of children living with their birth families. They hypothesized that PI children would perform below clinical threshold on tasks of sentence comprehension and that poor sentence comprehension would be associated with poor performance in working memory. Method: Twenty-three PI children and 36 comparison children were administered sentence comprehension and spatial memory tasks from standardized assessments. Results: Some oral sentence comprehension skills and the spatial working memory skills were weaker in the school-age PI children than in the age-matched comparison children. A mediational analysis demonstrated that poor spatial working memory performance partially explains the sentence comprehension differences between the 2 groups. Conclusion: These findings provide valuable information to better plan early intervention and special education for PI children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study on self-representation (SRE) paradigm in children. It states that SRE is observable in the event memory of children as young as three years old, which certifies that their self-recognition affect cognitive paradigms. It mentions that this self-recognition in preschool children might be used to assess their self-awareness and plays a vital role in children's organizing attention, cognition, and mnemonic storage. Meanwhile, it says that SRE paradigm could not develop on mirror self-recognition as an indicator of developmental self-awareness if there will be no equal memory performance.

The authors examined 284 maltreated and nonmaltreated children's (6- to 12-year-olds) ability to inhibit true and false memories for neutral and emotional information using the Deese/Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm. Children studied either emotional or neutral DRM lists in a control condition or were given directed-remembering or directed-forgetting instructions. The findings indicated that children, regardless of age and maltreatment status, could inhibit the output of true and false emotional information, although they did so less effectively than when they were inhibiting the output of neutral material. Verbal IQ was related to memory, but dissociative symptoms were not related to children's recollective ability. These findings add to the growing literature that shows more similarities among, than differences between, maltreated and nonmaltreated children's basic memory processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an experimental study on social influence, children (aged 11-12 years, N = 176) were interviewed about a personally experienced interaction with a stranger. Before the interview they watched a video-recorded statement from another witness (adult or child), who suggested either that (a) a person who was present during the event (a passenger) had actually not been present, or (b) a non-present person (a passenger) had actually been present. The social influence resulted in both commission and omission errors in children's reports. The children who correctly claimed to have seen a passenger reported significantly more details about this person than did the children who falsely claimed to have seen a passenger. In a target-absent lineup identification task, 87% of the children identified one or several foils. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, for the first time, prospective memory was investigated in 11 school-aged children with autism spectrum disorders and 11 matched neurotypical controls. A computerised time-based prospective memory task was embedded in a visuospatial working memory test and required participants to remember to respond to certain target times. Controls had significantly more correct prospective memory responses than the autism spectrum group. Moreover, controls checked the time more often and increased time-monitoring more steeply as the target times approached. These differences in time-checking may suggest that prospective memory in autism spectrum disorders is affected by reduced self-initiated processing as indicated by reduced task monitoring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two experiments examined the realism in the confidence of 8-9-year-olds, 12-13-year-olds and adults in their free recall and answers to focused questions after viewing a short video clip. A different video clip was shown in each experiment and the focused questions differed in difficulty. In both experiments the youngest age group, in contrast to the two other age groups, showed no overconfidence in their confidence judgements for the free recall. The free recall results also showed that the youngest group had lower completeness but similar correctness as the adults. There was a tendency, over both experiments, for the participants to show poorer realism for the focused questions than for the free recall, especially when questions with content already mentioned in the free recall were excluded from the analyses of the focused questions in Experiment 1. The study shows the importance of question format when evaluating the credibility of the confidence shown by 8-9-year-old children in their own testimony. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A crucial issue in the study of eyewitness memory concerns effects of repeated interviews on children's memory accuracy. There is growing belief that exposure to repeated interviews causes increased errors. In some situations, it may. Yet, several studies reveal increased accuracy with repeated interviewing, even when the interviews include misleading questions. We review repeated-interview research in relation to event veracity, interviewer bias, and delay. We conclude that when and how children are interviewed is at least as important for their accuracy as is how many times they are interviewed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study investigates the performance of persons with reading disabilities (PRD) on a variety of sequential visualcomparison tasks that have different working-memory requirements. In addition, mediating relationships between the sequential comparison process and attention and memory skills were looked for. Our findings suggest that PRD perform worse than normally achieving readers (NAR) when the task requires more than a minimal amount of working memory, unrelated to presentation rate. We also demonstrate high correlations between performance on the task with the most working-memory demands and reading-related skills, suggesting that poor working-memory abilities may be one of the underlying mechanisms of dyslexia. The mediating model analysis indicates that order judgment tasks are mediating to verbal working memory, suggesting that visual sequence memory precedes auditory sequence memory. We further suggest that visual tasks involving sequential comparisons could probe for poor working memory in PRD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Working memory is an important theoretical construct among children, and measures of its capacity predict a range of cognitive skills and abilities. Data from 9- and 11-year-old children illustrate how a chronometric analysis of recall can complement and elaborate recall accuracy in advancing our understanding of working memory. A reading span task was completed by 130 children, 75 of whom were tested on 2 occasions, with sequence length either increasing or decreasing during test administration. Substantial pauses occur during participants' recall sequences, and they represent consistent performance traits over time, while also varying with recall circumstances and task history. Recall pauses help to predict reading and number skills, alongside as well as separate from levels of recall accuracy. The task demands of working memory change as a function of task experience, with a combination of accuracy and response timing in novel task situations being the strongest predictor of cognitive attainment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We discuss a 44-month longitudinal study of the stability of the two-factor Norwegian Book Suggestibility Scale for Children (BSSC; Melinder, Scullin, Gunnerød, & Nyborg, 2005) in a sample of 7-year-old children (MTime 2 age=94 months). Several measures of suggestibility were assessed: yielding to suggestive questions (Yield), shifting answers in response to negative feedback (Shift), the sum of Yield and Shift (Total Suggestibility), and suggestibility in response to open-ended and misleading direct and tag questions about an event experienced 44 months earlier. Results showed a moderate correlation for Total Suggestibility scores over time in spite of marked declines in Yield and Shift. Both Yield and Total Suggestibility were related to children's tendency to respond affirmatively to misleading tag questions about the past event. The two-factor model of suggestibility showed some weakening over time with a positive correlation developing between Yield and Shift. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Often, when children testify in court they do so as victims of a repeated offence and must report details of an instance of the offence. One factor that may influence children's ability to succeed in this task concerns the temporal distance between presentations of the repeated event. Indeed, there is a substantial amount of literature on the “spacing effect” that suggests this may be the case. In the current research, we examined the effect of temporal spacing on memory reports for complex autobiographical events. Children participated in one or four play sessions presented at different intervals. Later, children were suggestively questioned, and then participated in a memory test. Superior recall of distributed events (a spacing effect) was found when the delay to test was 1 day (Experiment 1) but there was little evidence for a spacing effect when the delay was 1 week (Experiment 2). Implications for understanding children's recall of repeated autobiographical events are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In two experiments, 2- to 4-year-old children's understanding of knowing and guessing was studied in a non-verbal task, requiring the choice of a helper in a hide-and-seek task. Results indicate marked developmental progress in the age range between 30 and 36 months. While 2-year-old children performed at chance level, children above the age of 35 months consistently discriminated between a knowledgeable and an ignorant person, based on this person's perceptual access, in an interactive non-story task. Performance in control tasks indicated that young children were near ceiling in a non-epistemic task of the same format, and that the age trend persisted when only those children were considered whose failure in the epistemic task could not be attributed to memory problems or a failure to understand the task format. These findings are consistent with earlier research in the theory of mind literature (using verbal paradigms), indicating that children begin to understand the relation of perceptual access and knowledge around their third birthday. We discuss the results with respect to recent research indicating that an understanding of knowledge and belief emerges in communication around or before the age of 36 months. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers do not know how parents respond to children’s cursing or what effect parents’ responses have on children later in life. We conducted two studies with college students: a content analysis of 47 personal narratives of childhood cursing and an item analysis of a 70-item questionnaire administered to 211 students. Contrary to gender differences found in previous narrative and cursing research, men’s narratives were as emotional as women’s narratives, and women used as many curse words as men. The two studies confirm that cursing is a common childhood problem and that mothers play a more prominent disciplinary role than fathers do. Parents respond with physical forms of punishment (e.g., spanking) but not as frequently as verbal reprimands. Our data are the first to document the prevalence of washing children’s mouths with soap. College students have vivid memories of punishment; however 94% reported that they continue to curse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of inhibition in children's (5-, 7-, and 11-year-olds') false memory illusions in the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm was examined using a list-wise directed-forgetting procedure. Children studied either a single DRM list (control) or two DRM lists in succession with a directed-remembering instruction or a directed-forgetting instruction between list presentations. The findings indicated that, like adults, children effectively suppressed the output of true memories when given a directed-forgetting instruction. Unlike adults, whose false memories are not attenuated in directed-forgetting conditions, children suppressed false memories at recall in the directed-forgetting condition. Because recognition data indicated that the children did generate false memories regardless of instruction, it appears that although adults' false memories are generated automatically and do not become part of their conscious experience, children's false memories are produced with greater effort and conscious processing, and as a result are easier to suppress at output. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To address the question of whether memories from early childhood survive into later childhood, participants visited the laboratory at age 3 and again at 7, 8, or 9. At age 3, each talked with a parent about six events; at the later age each child talked with a researcher about four of these distant events as well as two more recent events. School‐aged children recalled fewer than half of the distant events introduced. Further, the proportion of distant events recalled was negatively correlated with age. Those distant events that were recalled, however, were recounted in an accurate, detailed manner. Importantly, reports of distant events did not reflect the full extent of children's narrative ability. Reports of recent events were more coherent and included twice the detail. Implications for existing interpretations of autobiographical memory and childhood amnesia are discussed, and the need for further research employing innovative methods is emphasised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two experiments investigated the impact of the relationship between processing and storage stimuli on the working memory span task performance of children aged 7 and 9 years of age. In Experiment 1, two types of span task were administered (sentence span and operation span), and participants were required to recall either the products of the processing task (sentence-final word, arithmetic total) or a word or digit unrelated to the processing task. Experiment 2 contrasted sentence span and operation span combined with storage of either words or digits, in tasks in which the item to be remembered was not a direct product of the processing task in either condition. In both experiments, memory span was significantly greater when the items to be recalled belonged to a different stimulus category from the material that was processed, so that in sentence span tasks, number recall was superior to word recall, and in operation span tasks, word recall was superior to number recall. Explanations of these findings in terms of similarity-based interference and response competition in working memory are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Investigates the constraints underlying working memory performance in children and adults. Interrelationship between processing, storage and complex span performance in children; Contribution of processing efficiency and storage capacity to complex span performance in children; Pattern of interrelationship between processing, storage and complex span performance in adults.

Examines the effects of age and degree of learning of children susceptible to retroactive interference. Manipulation of degree of target and interpolated learning; Measurement of the performance of children through recollections; Significance of secondary interaction involving frequency of interpolated participation and information type.

Focuses on the effects of age and task interruption on prospective memory (PM) of children. Importance of PM to children's everyday functioning; Types of memories; Relation between performance on retrospective and prospective memory task; Process involved in prospective remembering; Ways to assist children's PM.

Recent discussions of strategy development have included the introduction of the concept of utilization deficiency. The present analysis examines the definition of utilization deficiency vis-à-vis the older contrasts between mediation and production deficiency and assesses the logical clarity of the current definition. Further, because utilization deficiency focuses on the transition from initial to proficient strategy use, the present analysis considers all of the possible types of strategy inefficiencies and evaluates whether the current definition of utilization deficiency precludes consideration of important strategy inefficiencies that have been documented in the existing literature and are likely to form the bulk of yet-to-be discovered inefficiencies. Although the emphasis on strategy inefficiencies is welcomed, the current analysis concludes that there are serious problems with the current definition of utilization deficiency, problems that both obscure important theoretical distinctions of the past and limit the investigation of strategy inefficiencies that are likely to play an important role in our understanding of the development of strategy use. Furthermore, the linear developmental model that frames utilization deficiencies from no benefit to sophisticated strategy use ignores the heterogeneity in strategy development that has been recently documented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children aged 8 through 11 (N = 250) were given a word-by-word sentence task in both the visual and auditory modes. The sentences included an object relative clause, a subject relative clause, or a conjoined verb phrase. Each sentence was followed by a true-false question, testing the subject of either the first or second verb. Participants were also given two memory span measures: digit span and reading span. High digit span children slowed down more at the transition from the main to the relative clause than did the low digit span children. The findings suggest the presence of a U-shaped learning pattern for on-line processing of restrictive relative clauses. Off-line accuracy scores showed different patterns for good comprehenders and poor comprehenders. Poor comprehenders answered the second verb questions at levels that were consistently below chance. Their answers were based on an incorrect local attachment strategy that treated the second noun as the subject of the second verb. For example, they often answered yes to the question "The girl chases the policeman" after the object relative sentence "The boy that the girl sees chases the policeman." Interestingly, low memory span poor comprehenders used the local attachment strategy less consistently than high memory span poor comprehenders, and all poor comprehenders used this strategy less consistently for harder than for easier sentences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children (ages 3 to 18, N = 55) diagnosed with leukemia were tested for their memories of lumbar punctures (LPs), a repeated and painful part of the cancer treatment protocol. Memory for both event details and the child's emotional responses was assessed one week after the LP. Children of all ages displayed considerable accuracy for event details, and accuracy increased with age. Overall recall accuracy for event details and emotional responses was similar. Recall among children given oral Versed was similar to that among children not given Versed. Finally, higher distress predicted greater exaggerations in negative memory 1 week later (although controlling for age weakened this relationship); moreover, greater exaggerations in negative memory predicted higher distress at a subsequent LP. These results indicate that children's memories play an important role in their experience of distress during repeated stressful events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]