Memory Development Between Two and Twenty

Wolfgang Schneider, Michael Pressley

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781134802692
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

In this volume, two scholars with different but complementary interests in memory and cognitive development present a careful overview of the field of memory development from the perspective of their theory of good strategy use. In addition to treating broad topics of general interest, such as knowledge, cognitive capacity, and metamemory, the text also examines controversial issues surrounding the development of children's memory--particularly eyewitness memory. The result is a coherent statement about memory development accompanied by commentary on the study of memory development, plus applications of the theory and research in the area. This book is intended for advanced undergraduate and graduate students as well as researchers and other professionals interested in child and adolescent memory.

CHAPTER

1

MEMORY DEVELOPMENT SINCE WE WROTE LAST TIME: MUCH ADO ABOUT CHILDREN’S AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MEMORIES

About a decade ago, we set out to write the first edition of this book. At that time, we were writing mostly for other researchers interested in cognitive development and advanced students interested in a comprehensive introduction to memory development research. We were writing about memory development at a time when interest in the subfield was declining somewhat, following two extremely illuminating decades of research on the topic. We viewed the book as something of a capstone for an era, probably not the last word on memory development, but possibly the last word for a while.

Our perceptions on that point were in error. The first edition was well received. It sold very well, at least by the standards of academic publishing. There was enough demand that the first printing sold out, with a large second printing in paperback! Most of the issues covered in the first volume continued to be explored, albeit not always with the same intensity as had occurred previously. However, the biggest surprise of all was that many outside of the academic community began to take notice of, and indeed there was enormous public interest in, children’s memory.

What fueled this interest? The fates of people began to hang on the memories of children. There were a number of court cases at the end of the 1980s and in the early 1990s in which children provided testimony against adults, accusing them of atrocities. Often, the children testified years after they were supposedly abused by the accused adults. Many times, there was substantial, obvious contamination of the children’s memories by repeated questioning and coaching by attorneys and others. These cases fueled interest in applied research on children’s memory.

We believe that such applied research would have been far less interesting had it not coincided with complementary basic research at the time. In the late 1980s, memory development researchers were expending a great deal of effort to understand children’s autobiographical memories—what children know about their previous experiences and their personal histories (Brewer, 1986; K. Nelson, 1993b). Of course, children’s memories of abuse and other witnessed events are but special instances of autobiographical memories.

Given the saliency of research on autobiographical memory since the first edition, we felt that the best way to begin the revision of this volume is by reviewing research on autobiographical memory development. That is, we put at the forefront of this second edition of Memory Development Between Two and Twenty the research that is at the forefront of memory development today.

Autobiographical memories are of particular events that happened at a particular place and time. That is, although every Western adult knows what happens to them when they go to McDonald’s, that is not autobiographical memory. Recall of a visit to a McDonald’s in South Bend in the spring of 1982 when a fire broke out is an autobiographical memory. To use a distinction introduced by Tulving (1972), it is more episodic memory than semantic memory—that is, more memory for particular episodes than memory of how episodes of a particular type generally play out. Autobiographical memories can be based on a single events in the past (e.g., the one baseball practice an 8-year-old attended that resulted in the child deciding not to play little league that year) or repeated events in the past (e.g., memory of what went on at little league practices before the season started). Some autobiographical memories are more important than others, more defining for an individual than others. Thus, memory of the day that one’s best friend moved away, driving off in the U-haul truck, is a more critical piece of autobiographical memory than memory of the many moving vans that delivered furniture to new houses in the development as they were completed and occupied.

The research on the development of autobiographical memory can be organized into several major categories, which define the organization of this chapter. Thus, what follows are sections on infantile amnesia, children’s eyewitness memory, and adult memories of childhood.

INFANTILE AMNESIA

One plausible answer to the question “When does autobiographical memory begin?” is “It begins when infantile amnesia ceases.” Throughout the 20th century (Dudycha & Dudycha, 1941; Howe & Courage, 1993; Wetzler & Sweeney, 1986), there has been little dispute that adults cannot remember what happened to them during the first few years of their lives. Many times researchers have asked adults to recall memories from childhood. On average, adults do not recall events in their lives before about the age of 3½ years (Pillemer & White, 1989), although there are individual differences both between studies and between individuals within studies. Thus, occasionally someone recalls something from early in the third year of life; at the other extreme, there are some people that seem not to be able to remember anything from the first 6 or 7 years of life. This inability to recall early life events has been referred to as infantile amnesia.

Traditional Perspectives

There have been a variety of explanations offered for infantile amnesia (K. Nelson, 1993b): First, Freud (1963) suggested that repression could account for the phenomenon, that the child really has memories but these are not consciously accessible. Freud believed that early childhood was a period of high emotionality, for example, with preschoolers experiencing the emotional upheavals of the Oedipal and Electra conflicts. The memories of illicit desire for the opposite sex parent could overwhelm if recalled and thus, the ego represses them according to the Freudian account. The problem for this perspective is that it is difficult to identify any research that would support the Freudian viewpoint, or at least work that would be accepted as credible by the memory development research community.

Second, it may be that there once were memories of events during the first 3 years, but these have been forgotten. That is, the events happened a long time ago and the memory traces simply decayed with time. The difficulty with this position is that memory for what occurred earlier in life is not a simple linear function of how much time has passed since the event. Regardless of how long ago it was that you were 2 years old, you remember little to nothing from that year of life, whereas no matter how long ago you were 10, you remember much about that year of your life (Wetzler & Sweeney, 1986). Infantile amnesia does not reflect just the passage of time since the event occurred.

Third, there never were memories from that period of time. Somehow, early childhood is different from later life in that before age 3½, people do not form memories of events. The problem with this position is that there is a great deal of evidence that preschoolers do have memories of events that occurred in their life. K. Nelson’s work (e.g., 1993a), for example, is telling on this point. Beginning at about 21 months of age, Nelson listened in as a little girl named Emily laid in her crib. What Emily did was talk to herself a great deal, recounting the events that had occurred during the day and in her life. For example, at 32 months of age, Emily recalled for herself a happy event:

We bought a baby, ‘cause, the well because, when she, well, we thought it was for Christmas, but when we went to the s-s store we didn’t have our jacket on, but I saw some dolly, and I yelled at my mother and I said I want one of those dolly. So after we finished with the store, we went over to the dolly and she brought me one. So I have one. (p. 6)

Subsequent data presented in this chapter and later in the book (especially chapter 4) make clear that even very young children can and do form memories of particular events. Indeed, in the mid-1990s, the evidence is overwhelming that children’s earliest words to themselves and others often include information about the child’s past (Eisenberg, 1985; Hudson, 1990; Miller & Sperry, 1988; K. Nelson, 1988). The point with respect to infantile amnesia is that those events are not recallable years later.

In summary, none of the traditional perspectives on infantile amnesia proves convincing. More positively, a new hypothesis received substantial research attention in recent years.

An Emerging Explanation of the Development of Episodic Memory Skills

Perhaps young children form memories, but they are inaccessible years later. How could that occur? Particularly critical in being able to recall an event is that it is encoded in an organized way rather than as jumbled pieces of information. For example, one of the reasons that an adult can remember a trip to a Super Bowl 20 years ago is that the adult had much generalized knowledge of football games and the Super Bowl when the event occurred and has much the same general knowledge now. This generalized knowledge was helpful in encoding the original Super Bowl event. It is also helpful in retrieving information about attendance at that game. In contrast, a 2-year-old making a trip to a Super Bowl with a parent would not have the same schemas when the game was experienced, with the result fragmentary coding of the experience when it happened, so much so that the impressions of that day are difficult to access and reorganize once understanding of football and Super Bowls is acquired in the ensuing years. Because a young child experiencing a Super Bowl may pay attention to very different elements of the experience than an adult, the fragments of the experience that are encoded may be idiosyncratic and unrelated to the types of information an adult would go looking for in memory when asked to recall what happened when she or he went to the Super Bowl as a 2-year-old. This explanation seems plausible, given that young children’s encoding of once-experienced events is fragmentary. When very young children remember things that happened to them several months before, their memories often are disorganized and unstable (Fivush & Hamond, 1990).

Thus, one necessary ingredient for enduring autobiographical memories is some generalized knowledge of the world. It is a necessary, but not a sufficient ingredient, however: There is strong evidence that children 1 to 3 years of age can and do encode schematic information with respect to events they encounter often (again, see chapter 4, this volume), and yet, years later they will not recall these events.

Although even 1-year-olds can sometimes represent the order in which activities they observed occurred, with the recall of ordering more certain the more the activity is consistent with schematic understandings possessed by the child, their free recall of such events, nonetheless, is often fragmentary and disorganized (Bauer & Fivush, 1992; Bauer & Mandler, 1989, 1992; Bauer & Thal, 1990). K. Nelson (1993a, 1993b). Memory developmentalists believe (Fivush, 1994; P. J. Miller, 1994) that one explanation of increasing memory for particular episodes after the first 3 or 4 years of life is tied to increasing communication skills during the preschool years. That is, children need to learn how to talk about the experiences they have had before they form enduring memories of the events.

Learning to talk about one’s past seems to be a language skill that is acquired with experience. Adults are always telling stories about themselves and the child in the presence of the child. That is, adults are always modeling autobiographical remembering for children (McCabe & Peterson, 1991; P. J. Miller, 1994). However, parents do more than that; they also spend a great deal of time talking with their children about things that happened to them, assisting the child in learning how to be tellers of their own autobiographies.

Hudson (1990) offered a well-known analysis of her own daughter’s experiences in talking about the past and how those experiences translated into increasing ability to describe events in her life. What was particularly critical were many opportunities to talk about the past with Mom, with extended dialogues about the many things that had happened to Rachel. These dialogues were filled with maternal questions and responses from Rachel, such as in the following example:

Mom:	Did you like the apartment at the beach?
Rachel:	Yeah, And I have fun in the, in the, in the water.
M:	You had fun in the water?
R:	Yeah, I come to the ocean.
M:	You went to the ocean?
R:	Yeah.
M:	Did you play in the ocean?
R:	And my sandals off.
M:	You took your sandals off?
R:	And my jamas off.
M:	And your jamas off. And what did you wear to the beach?
R:	I wear hot cocoa shirt.
M:	Of, your cocoa shirt, yeah. And your bathing suit?
R:	Yeah. And my cocoa shirt.
M:	Yeah. Did we walk to the beach?
R:	Yeah.
M:	Who went to the beach?
R:	Mommy and Daddy.
M:	Did you play in the sand?
R:	Yeah.
M:	What did you do in the sand?
R:	Build sand castles.
M:	Yeah, and did you go in the water?
R:	(no response)
M:	Who went in the water with you?
R:	Daddy and Mommy.
M:	Right. Did the big waves splash you?
R:	Yeah.

Through experiencing such dialogues, Rachel learned how to talk about things that had happened to her. Consistent with the Vygotskian perspective (e.g., Vygotsky, 1978; chapter 8, this volume), Hudson (1990) concluded that the important thinking skill of being able to describe events in one’s life develops through social interaction. When the child cannot structure recall of an event, the mother asks questions, providing a scaffold for the child’s recall of the event. As the child becomes increasingly familiar with what should be told in recalling an event, and in fact begins to recall with greater completeness, adult scaffolding in the form of leading questions is reduced.

In short, engaging in dialogues about an event increases memory of the specific event. During such dialogues, the adult can provide elaborations on the child’s report or repetitions of it, with both types of reactions potentially affecting the content and strength of the child’s memory of the event discussed (Engel, 1986; Fiwsh, 1994; McCabe & Peterson, 1991). By talking about events in one’s life, often in dialogue with others, a person goes far in determining their autobiographical memories, one of the most important conclusions emerging from the study of children’s autobiographical narratives and dialogues (Fivush, 1994; P. J. Miller, 1994; K. Nelson, 1993a, 1993b). By the end of the preschool years, children who have had rich verbal interactions with parents are able to recall fairly complex events with a minimum of parental support in the form of leading questions (Hudson & Shapiro, 1991a, 1991b; Peterson & McCabe, 1983).

More importantly, however, children who engage in narrative dialogue with parents later are children who are more skillful in recalling events via narrative. They learn how to narrativize by dialoguing with mother, other adults, and older children (Fiwsh, 1994). They learn that they do know more than comes to mind immediately, that much can be recalled and reported given a little systematic searching of memory (Price & Goodman, 1990). That dialogical experiences are critical in development of autobiographical recall is supported by a variety of analyses relating the amount and quality of adult–child interaction about events and a child’s ability to recall events (Engel, 1986; Fivush & Reese, 1992; K. Nelson, 1993a, 1993b; Pillemer & White, 1989; Ratner, 1980, 1984; E. Reese, Haden, & Flvush, 1993; Tessler, 1986).

The hypothesis that dialogical experiences are critical in the emergence of autobiographical memories in the later preschool years is consistent with the Vygotskian perspective that cognitive skills are learned in interaction with others, with skills practiced in dialogue eventually internalized by the child as cognitive tools (see chapter 8, this volume). We expect a great deal of additional research on the narrativization hypothesis, if for no other reason that in the 1990s, Vygotsky’s theory is an extremely popular theory of socio-intellectual development.

In summary, during the first few years of life, children certainly are forming memories. There is acquisition of a great deal of generic knowledge, knowledge of the schematic structure and content of repeated events (Bauer, 1993). This knowledge mediates young children’s memories of particular experiences, but it is not sufficient for children to be able to recall and talk about what has happened to them in the past. It is not sufficient to support the development of long-term autobiographical memories. As children communicate with adults about the past, the dialogical experiences lead to an understanding of what needs to be included in the memory of an event and the communication skills required to organize and relate autobiographical events. At first, children can only communicate about events if adults cue them through a series of questions. Yes, the child knows the details—often as many as older children (Fivush & Hudson, 1990), but only provides them on cue. With experience, the child needs less cuing, for through dialoguing, the child has learned what needs to be reported and how to report it so that the report of events is sensible. Much of the development of autobiographical memories and memory skills can probably be explained as development of narrative language skills.

Other Mechanisms Contributing to the Emergence of Autobiographical Memory

As we suggest the importance of the learning-to-narrate-through-dialogue-experiences hypothesis, we also recognize that before it is possible to engage in dialogue and subsequent self-narrative, much development must already have occurred. Dialoguing with others depends on recognition of a self that is distinct from others and the development of the many language skills that permit dialogue (see Howe & Courage, 1993). We are only beginning to understand what is so different at 3½ to 4 years of age that permits the development of memories that endure for years compared to the first 3 years of life, when a child’s cognitive activities do not result in lasting episodic memories.

There are a variety of other mechanisms that have been identified as potentially contributing to the development of autobiographical memory (Fivush, 1994; K. Nelson, 1993a, 1993b): The first involves rehearing others tell stories about oneself, with such others coming to define one’s autobiography by what they include and do not include in retellings, what they emphasize and do not emphasize, and how they interpret the actions of the other. Yes, such retellings probably are more sensible as the child gains experience with narratives, and hence, retellings experienced after the onset of dialogical experiences with adults are likely to make more impact on autobiographical memory than retellings ea...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface to the First Edition
• Preface to the Second Edition
• 1 Memory Development Since We Wrote Last Time: Much Ado About Children’s Autobiographical Memories
• 2 A Brief History of Memory Development Research
• 3 Basic Memory Capacities and Mechanisms
• 4 The Knowledge Base
• 5 Development of Encoding and Retrieval Strategies
• 6 Metamemory
• 7 Good Information Processing: A General Model, A Specific Example, and Comments on How to Do Research on the Development of Information-Processing Proficiency
• 8 Is Good Strategy Use Possible?
• 9 Conclusions
• References
• Author Index
• Subject Index