Psy 611
Bjorklund Chapter 8:  Memory Development

I.                   Representation of Knowledge

A.                There are differences in declarative and non-declarative memories that occur as we age.

1.                  Declarative memory involves semantic and episodic memories, which are explicit (conscious) memories

2.                  Non-declarative (or procedural) memory involves implicit (unconscious) memories

II.                Memory development in infancy

A.                Preference for novelty as an indication of memory

1.                  gives infants the choice to look at a familiar or novel picture, indicating basic visual memory

2.                  auditory memory demonstrated by 1-month olds; preferred to hear mom reading

3.                  infants preference for novelty varies with age and degree of familiarity

B.                 Kicking up Their Heels

1.                  Rovee-Collier tested infants’ memory of an association between kicking a particular leg and movement of a mobile – the conjugate- reinforcement procedure.

2.                  infants as young as 2 months remembered over 2 days to 2 weeks

3.                  younger infants’ memories are very context-dependent; alter the contextual cues and the memory is not retrieved

4.                  13-month olds can learn an arbitrary three-item sequence

5.                  using the train task for older babies, Rovee-Collier found a continuous improvement in long term memory from 2 to 18 months

deferred imitation indicates long term explicit

III.              

A.                Neurological Basis of Infant Memory

A.                gradual maturation of the hippocampus, prefrontal cortex and structures in the temporal lobe is consistent with the gradual improvement of memory up to age 2

B.                 part of the hippocampus called the dentate gyrus continues developing long after birth; one layer is only 70% of its adult size at birth

IV.             Infantile amnesia – inability to remember autobiographical memories from early childhood

1.                  Very early memories are subject to problems with source monitoring

B.                 Why can’t we remember – several possible explanations

1.                  Freud – repressed memories

2.                  memories from infancy and toddlerhood may have been encoded in a manner different from later memories; since we no longer think like a young child, we can’t access those memories

3.                  autobiographical memory requires a sense of self; if there is not a strong sense of self to relate those memories to, they can’t be retrieved later

4.                  earlier memories may have been encoded verbatim, making them more susceptible to decay (remember the verbatim-gist shift)

5.                  young children tend to focus on script memories that are not particularly distinctive; adults have to teach children how to form useful memories

C.                 Infantile amnesia and hypnotic age regression – hypnosis does not seem to facilitate the accurate recall of early memories

V.                Implicit memory – memories of which one is not consciously aware

A.                Few age differences found in implicit memory; early developing

B.                 Implicit memories in children have been demonstrated by a priming effect and by physiological measures

VI.             The development of event memory – children’s episodic memories likely differ from older individuals because they pay attention to different aspects of the event

A.                Script-based memory

1.                  Organized schemes of recurring events

2.                  Scripted memory predates verbal abilities

3.                  Younger children are more likely to encode routinized events; they don’t realize that the non-routine events are more memorable

4.                  Reliance on scripted memory may be advantageous in helping the young child know what to expect

B.                 The role of parents in “teaching” children to remember

1.                  When parents talk with young children about past events, prompting their recall of the important elements of the event and providing additional cues, they are teaching the child how to form episodic memories

2.                  This teaching role is not universal; most common in post-industrial cultures

3.                  Parents encourage more detailed memory in girls than boys; this differential training may explain why girls tend to remember more than boys

VII.          Children as eyewitnesses

A.                Focus on how much they remember and how suggestible they are

B.                 Categories of factors that should be studied:  memory processes, the focus of the study – the nature of the material to be recalled, and participant factors such as emotional developmental and personality traits

C.                 Age differences in children’s eyewitness memories

1.                  How much, and how accurate

1.                  preschool children don’t spontaneously remember a lot of detail, but, barring suggestions, what they freely recall is likely to be accurate

2.                  when given general cues, they remember more correct and more incorrect information

3.                  under some conditions, false memories tend to persist, possibly due to the “gisty” nature of false memories

2.                  How long do they last - age differences in amount of correct recall are found after extended delays

3.                  The role of knowledge

1.                  as is true for other memory tasks, knowledge can improve recall

2.                  a well-established script, however, can interfere with accurate recall (child remembers something that usually happens, even though it didn’t happen this time)

3.                  characteristics of the interview

1.                              the use of anatomically correct dolls may produce significant false memories

2.                              the more children are asked the same question, the more likely they are to change their answer; however this finding does not always emerge

3.                              best case scenario for a child witness – no misleading questions and ensuring the child understands the nature of the questions

D.                Age differences in suggestibility – generally, children are more suggestible than adults

1.                  How do children respond to misleading questions

1.                  likely to follow the lead of the adult’s questions; the questioning appears to change their memories

2.                  the younger the child, the more susceptible to suggestions

3.                  suggestibility can be influenced by status of the questioner, the child’s knowledge base, frequency of experiencing the event, cognitive factors, and an overestimation of the ability to resist suggestions

2.                  False memory creation – preschoolers are more likely than adults to form false memories for plausible events

3.                  Field studies and recommendations to the legal system

1.                  findings from laboratory-based research seem to hold true for field studies

2.                  the NICHD has developed a protocol for interviewing children that draws on findings from laboratory studies

VIII.       Remembering to Remember

A.                Retrospective memory – remembering something that happened in the past

B.                 Prospective memory – remembering to do something in the future

C.                 Research finds a distinct relationship between remembering and interest in a task, but there is also the influence of executive functioning skills

Psy 342 Notes--Retrieval/Reconstructive Memory