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Differences in basic memory processes between maltreated and nonmaltreated children were examined in an experiment in which middle-socioeconomic-status (SES; N = 60), low-SES maltreated (N = 48), and low-SES nonmaltreated (N =51) children (ages 5-7, 8-9, and 10-12 years) studied 12 Deese - Roediger - McDermott lists. Using recall and recognition measures, the results showed that both true and false memories increased with age and, contrary to some speculation, these trends did not differ as a function of maltreatment status. However, there were differences in overall memory performance as a function of SES. These results are discussed in the broader framework of children's memory development and the effects of the chronic stress associated with child maltreatment on basic memory processes. Historically, there has been considerable debate about whether emotional experiences cause memory to operate differently from what is considered normal (Howe, 2000; Toth & Cicchetti, 1998). In an attempt to resolve this debate, some researchers have focused on two affective dimensions: arousal and valence. Both dimensions are represented as continua with arousal ranging from calm to excitement and valence ranging from pleasant to unpleasant (e.g., Bradley & Lang, 1994). Using these definitions, cognitive neuroscientists have found that information from emotional events may enjoy privileged access to processing resources, resources that may lead to the creation of superior memories (e.g., Dolcos & Cabeza, 2002). Although such research is key to our understanding of the theoretical mechanisms underlying memory for emotional events, the extent of emotion studied in the laboratory is necessarily limited to a restricted range on both the arousal and valence continua. If our goal is to understand how emotions associated with everyday experiences affect memory in general as well as memory for the emotional experiences themselves, then more extreme ends of these continua need to be examined.

The authors review several key areas of early cognitive development in which an abrupt shift in ability at the end of the second year of life has been traditionally assumed. These areas include deferred imitation, self-recognition, language, and categorization. Contrary to much conventional theorizing, the evidence shows robust continuities in all domains of early cognitive development. Where there is evidence of a reorganization of behavior that makes a new level of performance possible, dynamic-systems analyses indicate that even these may be driven by underlying processes that are continuous. Although there remain significant definitional and methodological issues to be resolved, the outcome of this review augers well for newer models in which cognitive development is viewed as a continuous, dynamic process.

We studied the effects of individual differences in speak-span scores and variations in memory demands on the class-inclusion performance of 10-, 13-, and 15-year-old children. The speak-span task was an age-appropriate modification of Daneman and Carpenter's (1980) reading-span task and was considered to be a measure of global resources. The age variable was assumed to be a global index of skill development, and some of the specific skills hypothesized to be important in class-inclusion reasoning were estimated using a mathematical model. The results from both regression analyses and the mathematical model indicated that differences in age, speak span, and memory load all affected performance. Surprisingly, the effects of speak span and memory load were independent. However, the effects of each of these variables depended on the age level of the participants. Based on these findings, we argued that (a) resources vary continuously with age, (b) both skill level and global resources should be varied in developmental studies of problem solving, and (c) resource theories (e.g., Norman & Shallice, 1986) should be modified to account for developmental change.

Using a paired-comparison procedure, we examined the effect of familiarization variables on 3.5-month-old infants' (n = 120) retention of dynamic visual stimuli after 1-min, 1-day, and 1-month delays. The proportion of total looking time to the novel stimulus revealed novelty, null, and familiarity preferences after 1-min, 1-day, and 1-month delays, respectively, for infants who were permitted 30 s of familiarization time. Twenty seconds of familiarization time was insufficient to produce novelty preferences. These results support models of infant retention in which the direction of attentional preferences (novel, familiar, or null) depends on memory accessibility. To examine the impact of individual differences in familiarization or attentional style on memory, infants were identified as long or short lookers according to their peak-look duration on pretest and familiarization trial measures. Compared to long lookers, short lookers showed better retention over time indicating that much of the variability in the infant group data could be accounted for by these individual differences.

It is argued that memory for traumatic events is similar to that for other distinctive, personally significant events regardless of whether they are affectively positive or negative. Examined in this light, the focus now shifts to the role of individual differences in neurobiological, social, cognitive, and constitutional factors that conspire to determine long-term retention of significant autobiographical experiences. What is known about these factors in determining memorability is reviewed, issues of measurement inadequacies discussed, and recommendations for further research outlined.

Using paired-comparisons, 3-month-olds' ( n = 148) recognition of dynamic visual events was investigated after retention intervals of 1 minute, 1 day, and 1 and 3 months (Experiment 1) and 1 minute, 1 day, and 1 week (Experiment 2). Participants were either tested at each retention interval (Multiple Tests) or tested at one interval (Single Test). The proportion of total looking time to the novel event and the length of the longest look to novel and familiar events in the first 15 s of the retention test revealed significant novelty preferences at 1 minute and 1 day and a null preference at 1 week for Multiple- and Single-Test groups. At 1 month, Multiple- (Proportion of Total Looking Time and Longest Look) and Single-Test groups (Longest Look only) preferred the familiar event. The 3-month test revealed a familiarity preference (both measures) for Single- and a null preference for Multiple-Tests groups. This changing pattern of attentional preferences is consistent with models of infant recognition memory in which novelty, familiarity, and null preferences are considered conjointly and hypothesized to reflect the accessibility of novel and familiar event representations in memory.

We investigated the possibility that age differences in infants’ long-term retention are artifacts of correlated differences in learning rates or learning opportunities (overlearning). Using path analytic procedures, these possibilities were examined in two experiments in which 15- and 18-month-olds (Experiment 1) and 12- and 15-month-olds (Experiment 2) learned five novel activities to a strict acquisition criterion. Three months later, infants’ retention was tested using four test trials with no further study opportunities. Using a series of causal models to test the relationships between age, learning rate, learning opportunities, and forgetting rate, the results disconfirmed the artifact hypothesis. These analyses indicated that, at least for criterion-learning designs, developmental declines in forgetting rates between 12 and 18 months of age do exist independent of developmental differences in learning. Furthermore, age differences in forgetting rates are not confounded with age differences in “overlearning.” These findings are discussed in terms of the growing body of evidence that attests to the continuity of memory development across childhood.

In this study the development of causal attributions about reading within low-income families was examined. Specifically, relations between children's reading achievement and their causal attributions were investigated as well as relations between the children's attributions about themselves and their parents' attributions about them. A total 513 students from Grades 3, 6, and 9, and one parent of each student, all from low-income families, participated. Students and parents independently rated the importance of seven causal variables (effort, intellectual ability, liking for reading, the teacher, help at home, difficulty of reading material, and luck) for the students' good and poor reading outcomes. The major findings were that (a) at each grade, students' attributions were reliably related to their reading achievement on the Gates-MacGinitie reading comprehension test, with attributions to ability, liking for reading, and help at home especially critical; (b) at each grade, parent attributions were reliably associated with student attributions; and (c) as students' grade in school increased, they focused more on themselves and less on others as causal determinants of their reading performance. The implications of these findings for research and education are discussed.

In this article, we present the contemporary conceptualization of metamemory as beliefs, accurate and naive, about memory. We discuss the implications of metamemory for memory construction in general and for suggestibility and the recovery of memories in particular. We argue that beliefs about memory influence (a) the probability that suggestions will be incorporated into memory and (b) judgements about the veracity of subsequent recollections. Implications for research on the role of beliefs in suggestibility and memory recovery are outlined.

We are pleased to announce that Professor Mark L. Howe, Department of Psychology, University of Lancaster, UK, has joined the journal and taken the post of joint Editor with Martin A. Conway. Mark ...

We investigated the presence of intrusions in preschoolers' memories for traumatic incidents by examining 30-, 36-, and 48-month-olds' initial and 6-month recall of traumatic events that required emergency room treatment. The basic findings were (1) the number of preschoolers who produced an intrusion at the 6th month's interview declined with age, (2) only the youngest preschoolers produced reliably more intrusions at 6 months than initially, (3) the amount of intruded information did not vary with age, and (4) the amount of information correctly recalled about the target traumatic event increased with age and was not affected by the presence of intrusions at any age. That preschoolers were able to recall considerable information concerning the target event, regardless of whether they did or did not produce intrusions, has implications for the veracity of their memories of trauma in real-life situations over extended retention intervals.

Children′s use of the middle concept was assessed in two developmental studies. In Experiment 1, children in kindergarten through Grade 5 were given middle-size pretraining followed by the presentation of sets of three stimuli representing eight novel dimensions. There was a marked improvement in the mastery of the middle concept across elementary school grades. Asking the child to point to the middle "dimension label" (e.g., middle oval) facilitated performance when compared to asking the child to point to the middle thing. In Experiment 2, second- through fifth-grade children were pretrained to choose the middle item associated with a single set of three stimuli, two sets of three stimuli representing the same dimension, or two sets of three stimuli with each set representing a different dimension. Transfer to six novel test dimensions was evaluated. Pretraining with two rather than one stimulus set transferred to the novel test dimensions. The results were related to induction and transposition theories and to issues concerning implicit and explicit learning.

Historical and current theories of infantile amnesia are examined. To evaluate the viability of these theories, as well as the phenomenon of infantile amnesia itself, a review of memory development from birth through the preschool years is provided, including an overview of relevant perceptual and neurological maturation. In the context of this review, extant theories of infantile amnesia are shown to falter, and it is concluded that infantile amnesia is a chimera of a previously unexplored relationship between the development of a cognitive sense of self and the personalization of event memory. This hypothesis is examined in detail and discussed in the context of related developments in language and social cognition.

Early in this century, interest in children’s cognitive development was motivated by the need to cultivate standardized, psychometric tests of intelligence. The dominant force driving many of these early investigations of the ontogeny of children’s cognition was that of associationism (e.g., Kendler & Kendler, 1962; Suppes & Ginsberg, 1963). As enthusiasm for this metaphor of cognition waned, Piaget’s (e.g., Inhelder & Piaget, 1958) logicism grew in popularity. This new image of the child-as-logician was fueled in large part, at least in North America, by Flavell’s (1963) masterful exposition of the tenets of Piaget’s theory of cognitive development. As research began to expose a variety of shortcomings in Piaget’s formalism, information-processing models (e.g., Siegler, 1981) and skills approaches (e.g., Fischer, 1980) began to appear. These newer models supplanted traditional Piagetian principles and enjoy a growing prominence in the cognitive development arena. As this century draws to a close, two major formalisms continue to dominate the cognitive development horizon: information-processing models in which the child is viewed as an abstract symbol manipulation device (e.g., Klahr, 1989; Klahr & Wallace, 1976) and Piagetian revivalism (for a review of neo-Piagetian theories, see Howe & Rabinowitz, 1990).

Part of a two-volume work that offers the full spectrum of current knowledge and research trends in cognitive developmental psychology, this particular book traces the development of cognitive competence, denoting a change in cognitive proficiency, understanding or mastery. It includes an analysis of innovative and previously unpublished studies. The primary challenge issued by the authors is to ensure the incorporation of new knowledge into educational practices.

The study of memory development in childhood has, for the most part, focused on processes involved in the initial acquisition of information, with considerably less attention having been directed at understanding the ontogeny of long-term retention processes. The paucity of research on this latter topic may be due to a general failure in the past to identify significant age trends in children’s long-term retention (for recent reviews, see Brainerd, Kingma, & Howe, 1985; Howe & Brainerd, 1989). When reliable age differences have been observed, they tend to be small in absolute magnitude (Fajnsztejn-Pollack, 1973; Hasher & Thomas, 1973; Kagan, Klein, Haith, & Morrison, 1973; Lehman, Mikesell, & Doherty, 1985; Morrison, Haith, & Kagan, 1980; Nelson, 1971; Rogoff, Newcombe, & Kagan, 1974; Sophian & Perlmutter, 1980; Wagner, 1978; Wickelgren, 1975).

Around the beginning of this century, a time that loosely marks the dawn of scientific inquiry into child development, the factors that controlled forgetting and reminiscence from infants’ and children’s long-term memory were a source of considerable debate (see discussions in Ballard, 1913; Freud, 1914/1938; Vertes, 1931/1932). Historically, speculation concerning the ontogenesis of long-term retention has ranged from hypotheses in which forgetting was said to increase with age (e.g., critical periods in early experience that were deemed essential to development and, hence, were believed to be preferentially preserved [Bowlby, 1960; Tinbergen, 1951]) to those in which forgetting was said to decrease with age (e.g., Ballard, 1913; Vertes, 1931/1932). A similar range of hypotheses has been entertained concerning the locus of forgetting, extending from pure retrieval positions in which, barring head trauma, information was thought to remain forever intact in storage, simply fluctuating in accessibility (e.g., Freud, 1914/1938; Hoffding, 1891) to positions in which changes occur in the information that was stored (e.g., Kohler, 1929, 1941; Wulf, 1922).

In van Geert’s article, a number of themes are discussed. To us, the pivotal theme concerns the construction of (mathematical) models to understand development. We have a great deal of sympathy with this position and have argued that progress in developmental theory is contingent on modeling (Howe & Brainerd, 1989; Howe & Rabinowitz, 1989, 1990; Rabinowitz, Grant, & Dingley, 1987). In this article, we discuss the merits of stage-based, knowledge-based, sequence-based, and chaotic conceptions in modeling development.

I Cognitive Factors.- 1 Development of a Mathematical Model of Memory for Clinical Research Applications in Aging.- Storage and Retrieval Contributions to Memory Dysfunction in Clinical Aging Populations.- Measurement of Storage and Retrieval Processes.- Conclusions, Limitations, and Prospects.- Appendix 1.A.: Memory Measurement Using the Two-Stage Model.- 2 Aging and Memory Disorders: A Neuropsychological Analysis.- Declarative Memory.- Implicit Memory.- Prospective Memory.- Concluding Remarks.- II Behavioral-Physiological Factors.- 3 Neuromuscular Performance of the Aged.- Balance in Upright Posture.- Human Walking Performance and Aging.- Age-Related Changes in Human Voluntary Strength.- Conclusion.- 4 Electrophysiology and Aging: Slowing, Inhibition, and Aerobic Fitness.- CNS Aging.- Slowing in Old Age.- Central Inhibition and Aging.- Event-Related Potentials in Atypical Aging.- Physical Fitness and Brain Functioning.- Summary.- III Toward an Integration of Cognitive and Behavioral-Physiological Factors.- 5 Physical Activity and Cognitive Changes with Aging.- Central Processing, Active Behavior, and Specific Motor Responses.- Factors Contributing to Impaired Response.- Impact of Habitual Activity.- Practical Implications.- Conclusions.- 6 The Measurement of Individual Differences in Aging: The Distinction Between Usual and Successful Aging.- General Issues.- Indexing Individual Differences in Usual Age.- An Index of Successful Aging.- Studies 1 to 4: Methods.- General Discussion and Conclusions.- IV Discussion.- 7 Cognition, Motor Behavior, and the Assessment of Atypical Aging.- Cognition and Motor Behavior.- Atypical Aging.- What Does Atypical Mean?.- Methods of Assessing Aging.- When Do We Stop Analyzing Atypicality?.- Summary.- Author Index.

Cognitive development, and more specifically memory development, in adulthood has been characterized as consisting of a global, albeit highly variable, decline in performance with advancing age (see Howe & Brainerd, 1988). One of the goals of research on the aging of memory is to decipher the extent to which input processes (encoding and storage) and output processes (retrieval) contribute to these overall changes in memory functioning (Poon, 1985). In the majority of these studies, design-based procedures have been used to partition storage and retrieval (e.g., comparing performance on recognition vs. recall tests, factorially manipulating variables on study and test trials). Unfortunately, it has been demonstrated that procedures such as these tend to confound theoretical variables with empirical outcomes (see discussions in Brainerd, 1985a; Howe, 1988), producing data whose interpretation is ambiguous. Other researchers have enjoyed somewhat greater success at disentangling storage and retrieval processes by using mathematical models whose parameters afford precise quantitative measurements of changes (developmental or otherwise) in these processes.

An eleven-parameter model for two-stage learning is developed. The model's principal advantage over extant two-stage models is that its parameter space is completely identifiable, thereby eliminating the tedious procedure of locating acceptable identifying restrictions. Identifiability is achieved by defining the model over a slightly modified outcome space. Following the identifiability proof, the necessary statistical machinery for parameter estimation, goodness-of-fit analyses, and hypothesis testing is presented. These latter developments are illustrated with data from an adult cued recall experiment and a free recall experiment with elementary school children.

Three experiments were conducted to investigate the general issue of the relationship between memory and reasoning and the specific issue of subskills used in answering class-inclusion questions. Semantic skills of first-grade children were investigated in the Pilot Experiment. In Experiment 1, an attempt was made to determine if fourth graders, seventh graders, and college students mimicked the first graders tendency to appropriately encode the superordinate class, but answer class-inclusion questions as though only subclass comparisons were required. A mathematical model and a computer-based methodology were developed for this purpose. Unlike previous research, in Experiment 1 fourth and seventh graders showed no understanding of class-inclusion logic. Because of the additional memory demands imposed by the questions used in Experiment 1, a third experiment was conducted to evaluate if memory load determined the quality of class-inclusion reasoning. The results obtained across the three experiments were interpreted as reflecting the need for a new conceptualization of the class-inclusion task. Performance seems to be dependent on subjects' abilities to integrate relevant subskills, rather than on deficient reasoning or missing subskills, consistent with a resource-limited, willed-attention, working-memory model.

Les sujets doivent atteindre un critere rigoureux de reussite dans une tâche d'apprentissage de listes de triades de mots (chacune des triades comprenant un indice et deux cibles). Dans l'experience 1, le degre de connaissance pre-experimentale est manipule en l'absence de relations semantiques entre les membres des groupes associatifs; dans l'experience 2, il y a relation semantique entre les membres des groupes. Les donnees d'acquisition des deux experiences sont analysees au moyen d'un modele mathematique qui tient compte des niveaux d'apprentissage

We report two free recall experiments and a cued recall experiment in which a new two-stage model was used to obtain numerical measurements of age changes in various aspects of storage and retrieval. The subjects in all three experiments were 7-year-olds (second graders) and 11-year-olds (sixth graders). The major findings in the free recall experiment were that getting a trace into storage posed less of a problem for elementary schoolers than learning how to get it out on test trials, that retrieval development is more rapid during the elementary school years than storage development, and that the superiority of older children's storage and retrieval abilities tends to become more pronounced as learning progresses. A similar pattern of results was obtained under different conditions in the cued recall experiment.

It is well known that much of everyday cognition relies on both the ability to acquire information and the ability to retain it over extended time intervals. Theories of memory development must, therefore, include assumptions about the processes that govern long-term retention of information as well as processes that regulate its acquisition. Unfortunately, while much is known about the development of acquisition processes, considerably less is known about the ontogeny of long-term retention. In this article, we discuss reasons for this discrepancy, and we review extant research on children's amnesia and hypermnesia. As the review unfolds, a number of methodological and measurement problems are examined, and a new theoretical framework is presented that is implemented in a mathematical model. We show how application of this framework eliminates the indicated problems.

Although Age × Treatment interactions have been widely viewed as key results in theories of memory development, most examples of such results (e.g., Age × Treatment interactions in the effects of item concreteness, item elaboration, and organizational context) have been identified in list-learning experiments where children of different ages receive a small, fixed number of study-test cycles on the target list. A stages-of-learning analysis reveals that such designs confound a treatment's potential interactions with age and its potential interactions with stage of learning. The analysis also reveals specific situations in which such designs will produce converging, diverging, and crossover Age × Treatment interactions even though the treatment does not interact with age in any way. A series of experiments is reported in which a mathematical model that incorporates stages-of-learning distinctions is applied to the well-known interaction between age and item concreteness (pictures versus words) in cued recall. Although a diverging Age × Treatment interaction has been observed in previous research, it was found that there are at least four different interactions between the picture-word manipulation and age; (a) a diverging interaction at storage that operates throughout elementary school; (b) a diverging interaction localized within retrieval learning and operating during the first half of the elementary school; (c) a converging interaction localized within retrieval learning and operating during the second half of elementary school; and (d) a diverging interaction localized within retrieval performance and operating throughout elementary school.

An experiment is reported in which the effects of taxonomic organization on 7-year-old and 11-year-old children's free and cued recall of two- and four-category lists were examined. The data were analyzed using a stages-of-learning model that simultaneously delivers estimates of the impact of these manipulations on storage and retrieval components of recall. The results indicated that for the Grade 2 children providing a category label at the time of recall primarily enhanced storage whereas increasing the number of categories primarily enhanced retrieval. For Grade 6 children, on the other hand, the use of category labels to cue recall primarily enhanced retrieval, whereas increasing the number of categories affected both storage and retrieval in free recall, but only retrieval in cued recall. In addition, while older children were superior to younger children at both storing and retrieving information, age differences at retrieval were generally larger than those at storage.

In this commentary, we argue that dual-task performance is currently not interpretable. The argument is based on the assumption that a number of plausible and compatible hypotheses have been offered to account for dual-task interference. Our present state of theoretical development does not permit us to discriminate among the alternative hypotheses. We demonstrate this by constructing a simple linear model which includes only limited resources and response competition. In order to fit this model, a minimum of eight groups must be run and single- and dual-tasks must be scaled on the same dimension.