Memory In Childhood

Question 1

What did Tuskin and Hayne find in their free recall for early events study?

Answer 1

Average age of early memory:

• 5 year olds = 1.5
• 5 to 9 years old = 1
• 12 to 13 years old = 2.5
• 18 to 20 = 3

Question 2

What is the problem with memory studies?

Answer 2

-almost impossible to verify wether participant is telling the truth as it is hard to verify the memory occurring at the age given.

Question 3

Outline Winograd and Killingers study

Answer 3

• university and high school students (participants)
• 1980
• asked to recall if they remember JFK shooting (1963)
• participants age in 1963 was 1 to 7

Results:
As age increased, strict and Lenient recall criterion from participants increased with lenient recall criterion being higher.

Question 4

Outline usher and Neisser (1994) study

Answer 4

-identified people who had one of the following experience in early childhood ages 1 to 5 :

1. The birth of a younger sibling
2. Hospitalisation of at least one night
3. The death of a family member
4. A family move to a new home

Results :

• targeted recall for early events increased with age
• birth of a younger sibling and hospitalisation had highest recall rates overall across ages

Question 5

What areas of the brain does declarative and non declarative memory rely on for it to be encoded?

Answer 5

Declarative (Episodic and semantic) : hippocampus

Non declarative (procedural) : basal ganglia and cerebellum

Question 6

What does Schacter and Moscovitch (1984) claim about memory?

Answer 6

Procedural memory (how system) is present from birth

Declarative system (what system) does not mature until about 9 months of age.

Question 7

What ways can we study memory in infancy?

Answer 7

Conditioning paradigms - the mobile conjugate reinforcement task

Conditioning paradigm - trains

Question 8

What age are both the mobile conjugate reinforcement task and train task used with?

Answer 8

Mobile - 2-6 months

Trains - 6 - 18

Question 9

How long are memories retained at different age?

And what study backs it up ? ( not needed)

Answer 9

2 months: 0 weeks

3 months : 1 week

6 months: 2 weeks

9 months : 6 months

12 months : 8 weeks

15 months : 10 weeks

18 months : 13 weeks

Hartshorn, K., Rovee‐Collier, C., Gerhardstein, P., Bhatt, R. S., Wondoloski, T. L., Klein, P., … & Campos‐de‐Carvalho, M. (1998). The ontogeny of long‐term memory over the first year‐and‐a‐half of life. Developmental Psychobiology, 32(2), 69-89.

Question 10

What do memory studies on infants that involve the conditioning paradigms suggest about the dual memory systems?

Answer 10

• they appear to involve procedural memory
• the results are consistent with the dual memory system model
• procedural memory is learned very quickly by the infants even though it usually takes many trials before it is strongly encoded

Question 11

What is dual memory system?

Answer 11

Theoretical model for long term memory which is made up of declarative and procedural memory.

Question 12

What is differed imitation ?

And why is it important when studying memory in infants ?

Answer 12

-The imitation of behaviour after an interval. (Usually an operation on some very simple equipment)

• If infants cant do this it would be consistent with the claim that there are qualitative differences between early and late memory.
• This is due to the dual memory system claiming that declarative memory is not formed until 9 months of age.

-Deferred imitation does use declarative memory and it is unclear wether conditioning paradigms use procedural or declarative memory.

Question 13

Does differed imitation occur winning the first twelve months of age?

Answer 13

Yes

Question 14

What evidence is there for differed imitation occurring the first twelve months?
What wearing evidence is there to the above?

Answer 14

Barr, R., Dowden, A., & Hayne, H. (1996). Developmental changes in deferred imitation by 6-to 24-month-old infants. Infant behavior and development, 19(2), 159-170.

• 6 month old infants were shown 6 demonstrations of actions, either all together or over 2 sessions (3 demonstrations 24 hours apart.
• The infants who received all demonstrations in one sessions had significantly higher differed imitation scores.

-However other studies that only demonstrate 3 times show that there is no differed imitation within twelve months

Question 15

What is a possible explanation for differed imitation occurring within twelve months of birth even though many demonstrations are required?

Answer 15

The hippocampus is not fully developed which the declarative system (what system) is located in.

Therefore the declarative system isn’t functioning greatly to its maximum future potential.

This means they will perform or encode actions better and more frequently that require procedural memory as the basal ganglia and cerebellum is much more mature since birth.

Question 16

What is the early and late memory systems ?

Answer 16

Early=procedural

Late= declarative

Question 17

Why do amnesia patients don’t do well on differed initiation tasks?

Answer 17

They have difficulty forming declarative memories.

Question 18

What does Rovee and Collier suggest about the biological explanation of childhood amnesia?

Answer 18

-Childhood memories below 3 is so rare that if the lack of behaviours from infants that require declarative memory is due to underdeveloped brains this means there aren’t many underdeveloped infant brains there would be more earlier memories below the age of 3.

Question 19

What can affect memory retrieval during infancy?

What evidence is there?

Answer 19

Contextual cues

• 6 Month olds were exposed to two different fabric patterns (A or B) 1 hr a day for 7 days
• They then underwent the mobile conjugate reinforcement task decorated in a cot with pattern A or B
• 24 hours they underwent the test phase and found learning/conditioning would more likely occur if the crib was decorated in the same pattern they had been exposed to during the learning phase of the task.

Question 20

What does boller suggest about the contextual cue for learning explanation for infants?

Answer 20

He suggests that forgetting decreases with age because the older you get the more cues are associated with a stimulus

Showing a child the conditioned stimulus can make them recover knowledge but retention is shorter as they have to be exposed to the stimulus in order to recover knowledge.

The stimulus is required as it is the only isolated cue that can make them recover knowledge of a learned behaviour.

Question 21

What other argument is there for childhood amnesia?

Answer 21

Independent location

• at 9 months they can crawl around.
• being able to move expands the child’s experiences of more objects in different contexts

-Herbert, Gross & Hayne compared a group of 9 months olds who could and couldn’t crawled in a differed imitation task and found that those who could crawled performed better.
Those who didn’t crawled could only perform well if tested on same object (ringing bell on animal, if it was a different animal they could not)

Question 22

What is the encoding specificity?

Answer 22

-forgetting is less likely to occur if the context of encoding is similar to the context of retrieval.

Question 23

How does the encoding specificity hypothesis affect language and encoding?

Answer 23

Memories are encoded differently when we develop linguistic skills,

So we no longer have access to our pre verbal memories as they are in a different encoded format.