8 Memory Development

CHAPTER 8 MEMORY DEVELOPMENT IN THIS CHAPTER distribute REPRESENTATION OF KNOWLEDGE DEVELOPMENT OF EVENTor MEMORY MEMORY DEVELOPMENT IN INFANCY Script-Based Memory Preference for Novelty as an Indication of Role of Parents in “Teaching” Children to Memory Remember Kicking Up Their Heels CHILDREN AS EYEWITNESSES Deferred Imitation as a Measure of Memory Age Differences in Children’s Eyewitness Neurological Basis of Infant Memory post, Memories INFANTILE AMNESIA Age Differences in Suggestibility Why Can’t We Remember Events From Final Thoughts on Children as Eyewitnesses Infancy and Early Childhood? REMEMBERING TO REMEMBER Infantile Amnesia and Hypnotic Age Regression copy,KEY TERMS AND CONCEPTS IMPLICIT MEMORY SUGGESTED READINGS not lthough rare, some people have one or personally poignant memory to my mother. She more vivid memoriesDo from infancy or listened carefully and then told me that I had Aearly childhood. -One of us (DB), for never had the croup; my younger brother Dick example, recalls a memory stemming from the had the croup as a toddler. I was about 4 years first year of life. My memory is of me as a sick old at the time. My “memory” was a reconstruc- baby. I had the croup (something like bronchitis). tion—and of an event I had only observed, not When I recall this memory, I can feel the conges- one I had actually experienced. Most memories tion in my chest, hear the vaporizer whir, smell of infancy, it seems, are like mine—reconstruc- the Vicks ProofVapoRub, and see the living room of tions of events that never happened or, perhaps, my grandparents’ house while looking through that happened to someone else, but what one the bars of my crib. The memory is like a mul- is remembering is the retelling of that event by tisensory snapshot. I have no story to tell, only other people. the recall of an instant of my life as a sickly It’s hard to overestimate the significance of Draftbaby. My mistake was relating this vibrant and memory for our lives. Our memories define for 300 Copyright ©2017 by SAGE Publications, Inc. This work may not be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means without express written permission of the publisher. CHAPTER 8 MEMORY DEVELOPMENT 301 us what we’ve done, who and what we know, dynamically interacting factors that vary over and even who we are. Nearly all acts of cognition time. Despite the wealth of information we involve memory. A 4-month-old looks longer at have about children’s memory today, we are a new picture than at one he has seen repeat- just beginning to develop an appreciation for edly, a 3-year-old recounts her class field trip to the factors and contexts that influence children’s a bakery, a 7-year-old lists for her mother the memory performance and the development of names of all her classmates in preparing to send those abilities. Valentine’s Day cards, and a high school sopho- In this chapter, we examine research and more attempts to remember everything his father theory dealing with the development of mem- asked him to get at the corner store. Each of these ory in children. We open the chapter with a diverse activities involves memory. The 4-month- brief examination of the differentdistribute ways knowl- old can recognize a new stimulus only if he has edge can be represented in memory. We then some notion that it is different from a previously examine memory developmentor in infancy, fol- experienced but currently unseen one. The mem- lowed by a look at children’s implicit memory. ory requirements for the three older children are Children’s memories for events—specifically, more demanding, but all involve retrieving from autobiographical memories—are discussed memory some previously stored information. next. We also review research on children as Memory is not a unitary phenomenon. Infor- eyewitnessespost, and the factors that influence mation must be encoded and possibly related their suggestibility. This is followed by a brief with other information known to the individual. look at the development of “remembering to What knowledge already resides in memory remember,” or prospective memory. Through- influences the ease with which new information out the chapter we describe social-cultural is stored and later retrieved. copy,influences on memory, as well as the adap- Memory development is one of the oldest, tive nature of memory, from an evolutionary continuously researched topics in the field of perspective. cognitive development. But how it is researched,not and the theoretical focus of the researchers, is much different today than it was 30 years ago. In the previous chapter,Do we discussed that REPRESENTATION how much children remember- is influenced OF KNOWLEDGE by developmental differences in basic information-processing abilities of encoding, stor- As we saw in Chapters 5 and 6, how people rep- age, and retrieval and by the strategies they resent information changes with age, and this is a use to intentionally learn information. Today, central issue in cognitive psychology. We take it for however, there is an increasing awareness that granted that knowledge is represented somehow in memory isProof used for specific purposes and in spe- our brains and that we can access it whenever we cific social contexts (Ornstein & Light, 2010). want. But knowledge is not quite so simple. Is It is not enough merely to assess children’s everything we know represented in such a way memory behavior in one context, particularly that we can easily (and consciously) retrieve it on Drafta context devoid of social meaning. How and demand? Might there be some things we know what children remember depends on a host of that affect our thoughts and behavior that are Copyright ©2017 by SAGE Publications, Inc. This work may not be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means without express written permission of the publisher. 302 CHILDREN’S THINKING difficult or impossible to bring to consciousness? is, you just can’t ask someone to remember And if so, how do these things develop? something he or she knows only implicitly). Endel Tulving (1987, 2005) proposed that Consider the classic case of amnesia, where a information in long-term memory can be rep- person walks into a police station and announces resented in one of two general ways: declarative to the desk sergeant that he has no idea who he is memory and nondeclarative memory. Declarative or how he got there—the perfect beginning of a memory refers to facts and events and comes mystery novel. Now consider a person who knows in two types: episodic memory and semantic very well who she is and can carry on a conversa- memory. Episodic memory—literally, memory tion just fine, but 5 minutes after meeting you, for episodes, such as what you had for breakfast she has forgotten who you are and anything you this morning, the gist of a conversation you had talked about. Yet were you to meetdistribute with her every with your mother last night, and the Christmas day and teach her how to tie a complicated knot, visit to your grandparents when you were 5 years after a week of practice sheor would be able to old—can be consciously retrieved. Such memory tie the knot expertly without having any aware- is sometimes called explicit memory, which refers ness of doing it before. These are both forms of to the fact that it is available to conscious aware- amnesia (retrograde amnesia in the first case and ness and can be directly (explicitly) assessed by anterograde amnesia in the second), but different tests of recall or recognition memory. memory systemspost, are involved. In the first case, the Semantic memory refers to our knowledge of person has lost his personal history. He remem- language, rules, and concepts. So, for instance, bers nothing about “the self.” In the second case, the meaning of the term democracy or the rules the person’s sense of self and personal history is for multiplication are examples of semantic intact. However, she can learn no new informa- memory. For instance, the definition for the copy,tion other than some procedures (tying knots), word perfunctory is part of my (KC) semantic and she will have no recollection of having ever memory, but my recollections of the events sur- learned them. In both cases, people keep their rounding my learning the word (preparingnot for knowledge of their language, multiplication tables, comprehensive exams in graduate school) are and basic facts of the world. For example, if they part of my episodic memory. were American citizens, they would likely know The second general type ofDo memory has been the current president and who the first U.S. presi- termed nondeclarative memory- (or procedural dent was. The example of the person with retro- memory). Nondeclarative memory refers to grade amnesia who forgot who he was displays a knowledge of procedures that are unconscious. deficit in a form of explicit/declarative memory— For example, some have argued that the learn- specifically, episodic memory. The example of the ing and memory observed in classical and oper- person with anterograde amnesia displays access ant conditioningProof are unconscious, as are many to past episodic memories but an inability to form familiar routines once they have become well new ones (usually because of damage to the hippo- practiced (tying one’s shoe, for example). Such campus), although she can form new procedural memory is sometimes called implicit memory, memories. The existence of these dissociations— which refers to the fact it is unavailable to instances where one form of memory is impaired Draft conscious awareness (“memory without aware- while others remain intact—provides evidence for ness”) and can be assessed only indirectly (that independent memory systems that serve specific Copyright ©2017 by SAGE Publications, Inc.

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