Memory Binding in Early Childhood: Evidence for a Retrieval Deficit

Previous research has suggested that performance for items requiring memory-binding processes improves between ages 4 and 6 ( J. Sluzenski, N. Newcombe, & S. L. Kovacs, 2006 ). The present study suggests that much of this improvement is due to retrieval, as opposed to encoding, deficits for 4-year-olds. Four- and 6-year-old children ( N  = 48 per age) were given objects, backgrounds, and object + background combinations to remember. Younger children performed equivalently to 6-year-olds during a working memory task for all types of memory questions but were impaired during a long-term memory task for the object + background combinations. Furthermore, this deficit was completely due to differences in false alarm rates, suggesting that separate analyses of hits and false alarms may be preferable to corrected recognition scores when studying memory development.     

Memory for pictures: a life-span study of the role of visual detail

This experiment assessed the effect of the amount of physical detail in pictures on picture recognition memory for 7-year-olds, 9-year-olds, young adults, and older adults over 68. Subjects were presented simple and complex line drawings, factorially combined in a "same-different" recognition test with simple or complex forms of each. For each age group, recognition accuracy was significantly higher for pictures presented in the simple than in the complex form. This effect was due to differences between simple and complex pictures in the correct rejection rate but not the hit rate; subjects were less accurate detecting deletions from changed complex pictures than additions to changed simple pictures. The older adults were no better than chance at correctly rejecting changed complex pictures. Although increasing the presentation duration from 5 sec to 15 sec increased overall accuracy, it did not increase subjects' ability to correctly reject changed complex pictures. Results are interpreted in terms of schematic encoding and storage of pictures. Accordingly, visual information that communicates the central schema of each picture is more likely to be encoded and retained in memory than information that does not communicate this schema.     

Development of detection and recognition of orientation of geometric and real figures.

Black and white kindergarten and second-grade children were tested for accuracy of detection and recognition of orientation and location changes in pictures of real-world and geometric figures. No differences were found in accuracy of recognition between the 2 kinds of pictures, but patterns of verbalization differed on specific transformations. Although differences in accuracy were found between kindergarten and second grade on an initial recognition task, practice on a matching-to-sample task eliminated differences on a second recognition task. Few ethnic differences were found on accuracy of recognition, but significant differences were found in amount of verbal output on specific transformations. For both groups, mention of orientation changes was markedly reduced when location changes were present.     

The Role of Semantic Context and Memory in the Acquisition of Novel Nouns

Three studies assessed the ability of 2-year-olds to use semantic context to infer the meanings of novel nouns and to retain those meanings a day later. In the first experiment, 24 2-year-olds heard novel nouns in sentences that contained semantically constraining verbs (e.g., "Mommy feeds the ferret"). They chose from a set of four novel object pictures to indicate the referent. Children learned a majority of the novel words. However, they occasionally failed to choose the correct object even when they understood the verb. Experiment 2 examined whether this was due to an inability to identify some of the pictures of novel objects. Experiment 3 tested 24 2-year-olds' memory for the newly learned nouns following a 24 hr delay and found significant retention. Results are discussed in terms of learning mechanisms that facilitate vocabulary acquisition in young children.     

Learning While Testing

Abstract

This study investigated the performance of preschool and kindergarten children with visual discrimination exercises drawn from reading readiness materials prior to visual discrimination training. The exercises contained three sources of stimuli: representations of objects, letters, and words. Results indicate that many preschoolers and most kindergartners measured possess the skills necessary to successfully perform visual discrimination exercises. The 8s were able to discriminate representations of objects and letters equally well; however, word stimuli were significantly harder to discriminate than either representations of objects or letters. Results indicate that visual discrimination training should be provided to pre-readers on a selected basis.     

Complex patterns for kindergartners

Knowing what kinds of patterns are easy for children to recognize early in their kindergarten year, and what kinds are difficult, can be a useful guide for patterning instruction. Hence, the ability of children to recognize complex patterns early in their kindergarten year was assessed in two experiments. One experiment showed that the children were significantly less accurate on patterns made of progressively higher numbers or of letters that came progressively later in the alphabet than on patterns made of clock faces that showed increasing amounts of time or were made of rotating objects. There was an interaction between the type of element of which the pattern was composed and the pattern’s orientation. A second experiment showed that symmetric patterns were easier than growing patterns, and there were effects of orientation and the elements of which a pattern was composed, as well as interactions. This research indicates that instruction on clock faces and rotating objects should precede instruction on letters and numbers, and that symmetric patterns can also be easily understood.     

Children's use of frames of reference in communication of spatial location

The frames of reference used by 4-, 6-, and 8-year-old children were studied in a spatial direction-giving task. Children were asked to specify verbally the location of a toy hidden under one of several identical cups. The child and listener sat facing each other at opposite ends of a room that had distinctive or nondistinctive landmarks proximal and distal to the hiding location. Location needed to be specified with respect to either the left-right dimension, the front-back dimension, or both. The results indicated that (1) although children's overall performance improved with age, communication about the left-right dimension was particularly difficult for 4-year-old children and showed a higher rate of improvement with age than communication about the front-back dimension; and (2) the frames of reference that children incorporated into their directions changed with age and differed for directions about the front-back and left-right dimensions. Both 4- and 6-year-old children used person references (themselves or the listener) to specify front-back relations, but only the 6-year-olds were able to compensate for their apparent difficulty in using the terms left and right by using landmarks to specify the left-right dimension. Eight-year-olds used a combination of person and landmark references in directions about both dimensions. Discrepancies between the frames of reference children used to communicate spatial location and those typically used in other spatial cognition tasks are discussed in terms of developmental and task constraints.     

Children's memory for orientation in the absence of external cues

Some have interpreted children's reliance on external visual cues as evidence that they are unable to use internal cues for orientation. This hypothesis was examined in experiment 1, where 24 preschoolers were tested on left-right, vertical-horizontal, and mirror-image oblique discriminations under essentially context-free conditions. Subjects succeeded on all discrimination problems and performed equally well on vertical-horizontal and mirror-image oblique discriminations. Thus, preschoolers can use an internal frame of reference to code orientation. Experiment 2 contrasted children's performance under context-free conditions with their ability to discriminate orientation in the presence of external visual cues. Children who had discriminated left-right oblique and nonoblique mirror-image forms in experiment 1 failed to so discriminate in experiment 2. This result is discussed in terms of a breakdown in the ability to use internal cues when external visual cues are available.     

Children's Memory of an Occurrence of a Repeated Event: Effects of Age, Repetition, and Retention Interval across Three Question Types

Children's memory of the final occurrence of a repeated event was examined whereby each occurrence had the same underlying structure but included unpredictable variations in the specific instantiations of items across the series. The event was administered by the children's teachers at the kindergarten or school. The effects of repetition (single vs. repeated event), age (4–5 vs. 6–8-year-olds), retention interval (1 week vs. 6 weeks), and the frequency of specific instantiations of items were examined across 3 question types. Repetition increased the number of items recalled on a level that was common to all occurrences in response to general probes and reduced the likelihood that children would report details that did not occur in the event. However, repetition also reduced the number of correct responses about which instantiation was included in the occurrence and decreased the consistency of responses across repeated questioning. Most errors were intrusions of details from other occurrences; usually references to instantiations of items that had occurred frequently throughout the series. The younger children showed a poorer ability to discriminate between the occurrences than the older children, but age differences were less evident at the longer retention interval. The results are discussed in relation to current theories of memory and children's eyewitness testimony.     

Using Scaffolding Strategies to Promote Young Children’s Scientific Understandings of Floating and Sinking

The purposes of this study are to examine young children’s explanations of floating and sinking and to investigate how scaffolding strategies provided by a tutor could promote their scientific understandings. Fifteen 4-year-olds and fifteen 5-year-olds from a public kindergarten in northern Taiwan participated in this study. The children were interviewed before and after an instructional intervention to examine their understandings about how the weight, volume, and material of an object are related to sinking and floating. During the intervention, children manipulated objects made of different materials and were assigned to one of the three groups: scaffolding-material (provided with teaching scaffolding and allowed to see the materials of the objects), scaffolding (teaching scaffolding only), and material groups (seeing the materials only). In the first two groups, 16 teaching strategies based on six scaffolding principles were employed. Analyses of interviews showed that before the intervention, the 4-year-olds seemed to have a variety of explanations for sinking and floating and a majority of the 5-year-olds used weight as an explanation for floatation. After the intervention, both 4- and 5-year-olds in the scaffolding-material and scaffolding groups improved their understandings of floating and sinking. Particularly, three out of five 5-years-olds in the scaffolding-material group related the material of an object to its buoyancy and generalized their explanations to the objects made of the same material. The findings suggest that manipulative experiences alone might not be enough for children to further their understandings about floatation and that combining teaching scaffolding with children’s perceiving of the materials of objects is more effective. This study provides insight into how to support young children to learn science through effective teaching strategies.     

Levels of Comprehension Monitoring and Working Memory in Good and Poor Comprehenders

This paper reports two studies that investigate differences in comprehension monitoring skills between good and poor comprehenders. Two groups of 9– to 10-year-olds, who were matched for reading vocabulary and word recognition skills but who differed in comprehension skill, were selected. In the first study, in which the children were required to find anomalous words and phrases, the skilled comprehenders engaged in more accurate monitoring of sentence level anomalies (but not word level anomalies) than did the poorer comprehenders. In the second study, the comprehension monitoring task required the children to detect pairs of sentences, in short texts, that were contradictory. In addition, the working memory demands of the task were varied by placing the two items of inconsistent information either in adjacent sentences, or in sentences that were separated in the text by several others. As in the first study, less-skilled comprehenders performed more poorly on the detection task, but the difference between the groups was considerably more pronounced when the sentences were separated than when they were adjacent. In addition, the children were given a numerical working memory test, and the poorer comprehenders performed more poorly on this test. However, although working memory performance was related to performance on some of the error detection tasks, comprehension ability was also a good, and sometimes better, predictor. The results are discussed in terms of the different cognitive abilities that might contribute to efficient comprehension monitoring.     

When induction meets memory: evidence for gradual transition from similarity-based to category-based induction

The ability to perform induction appears early; however, underlying mechanisms remain unclear. Some argue that early induction is category based, whereas others suggest that early induction is similarity based. Category- and similarity-based induction should result in different memory traces and thus in different memory accuracy. Performing induction resulted in low memory accuracy in adults and 11-year-olds, whereas 5-, and 7-year-olds were highly accurate (Experiment 1). After training to perform category-based induction, 5- and 7-year-olds exhibited patterns of accuracy similar to those of adults (Experiment 2). Furthermore, 7-year-olds, but not 5-year-olds, retained this training over time (Experiment 3). With novel categories, even adults performed similarity-based induction, exhibiting high memory accuracy (Experiment 4). These results suggest a gradual transition from similarity- to category-based induction with familiar categories.     

Memory demands and the development of young children's memory

The primary purposes of this study were to determine the nature of and changes in early memory demands and to assess the relationship between memory demands and memory performance. 10 children at each of 2 ages--30 and 42 months--were observed in their homes for 4 2-hour sessions. Conversations between mothers and children were recorded and mother's memory-demand questions were coded for form and content from these conversations. Question form referred to whether recall or recognition was required and question content to the type of information requested--event or knowledge. Children also participated in 2 long-term memory tasks--production and verification. They were shown a dollhouse and asked to produce the names of objects that would belong in 2 rooms of the house and to verify whether particular miniature replicas of household objects belonged in the rooms. Although memory demands were frequently made, there were few changes between age 2 and 3 in the incidence or types of questions children were asked. At age 3, positive correlations were found between children's production and verification performance and content rather than form of mothers' memory-demand questions. At age 2 no overall relationships were found. Children were retested a year later on memory tasks, and for both age groups memory demands and performance were positively correlated even when initial memory-performance level was controlled. These results, along with other patterns in the data, suggested that mothers' memory demands have an impact on children's memory performance that provides at least partial support for Vygotsky's sociohistorical model of memory development.     

Priorities in children's expectations about object label reference: form over color

Young children show considerable interest in color similarity; thus we might expect them to use color as a basis for generalizing object labels. However, natural language observations suggest they do not: children tend to overextend labels based on form similarity and rarely, if ever, overextend labels to objects that share only color. Perhaps, then, children give form priority over color in their expectations about object-label reference. This hypothesis was investigated in 2 studies. In a first study, 40 2- and 3-year-olds sorted 10 sets of 3 pictures that contrasted form with color. Children participated in 1 of 2 conditions: half of the children were shown a target object and asked to "find another one" from among the two choice objects, while the other children heard a novel label for the target (e.g., "See this zom?") and were asked to extend the label (e.g., "Can you find another zom?"). 3-year-olds sorted almost exclusively on the basis of form in both conditions, while 2-year-olds performed differently in the 2 conditions: they frequently chose the color match when labels were absent, but selected by form rather than color when asked to extend a novel label. A second study replicated these findings with novel objects that were real rather than pictured. This study also suggested that 3-year-olds grant color some role in their decisions about object-label reference as long as form differences are reduced to a tolerable level. In sum, young children expect form to be more important than color for guiding object-label reference, even though they may find color interesting when not asked to extend labels. This expectation helps explain the speed and relative ease with which children acquire object labels.     

A Comparison of Young Children's Understanding of Contradictory Representations in Pretense, Memory, and Belief

The present study examined the nature of young children's understanding of various mental representations. 3- and 4-year-olds were presented with story protagonists who held mental representations (beliefs, pretenses, and memories) that contradicted reality. Subjects chose 1 of 2 alternate " thought pictures " (depicting either the mental representation or reality) that reflected the mental state. While 4-year-olds performed relatively well on all scenario types, 3-year-olds chose the correct thought picture significantly more often for pretense and memory scenarios than for false belief scenarios. These results suggest that young children conceptualize pretense as involving mental representations, and that they have more difficulty understanding contradictory mental representations that purport to correspond to reality.     

Distance distortions in memory for spatial locations

The present study examined developmental differences in the effect of route extensity on the memory for the locations of objects in a spatial array. Kindergarten and adult subjects were trained to remember the locations of 4 objects. During this training, objects were either connected by a combination of indirect, looped train tracks and direct train tracks (experimental subjects) or connected by entirely direct train-track routes (control subjects). Analyses of actual interobject distances, from subjects' reproductions of object locations on a response board (without train tracks), revealed that children, but not adults, distort distance in terms of the nature of travel observed between objects. Further testing revealed that differences in the amount of time taken for travel could not account for the results obtained with children.     

Faces Do Not Capture Special Attention in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Change Blindness Study

Two experiments investigated attention of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) to faces and objects. In both experiments, children (7- to 15-year-olds) detected the difference between 2 visual scenes. Results in Experiment 1 revealed that typically developing children ( n  = 16) detected the change in faces faster than in objects, whereas children with ASD ( n  = 16) were equally fast in detecting changes in faces and objects. These results were replicated in Experiment 2 ( n  = 16 in children with ASD and 22 in typically developing children), which does not require face recognition skill. Results suggest that children with ASD lack an attentional bias toward others' faces, which could contribute to their atypical social orienting.     

The Effects of Grade Level,Type of Motion,Cueing Strategy,Pictorial Complexity,and Color on Children's Interpretation of Implied Motion in Pictures

The ability of kindergarten and 3rd-grade children to accurately interpret implied motion in pictures was examined. Sixty-four children responded to pictures from experimental conditions that varied type of motion, cueing strategy, pictorial complexity, and color. The 3rd-grade children were more adept at identifying implied motion than the kindergarten children, the postural motion condition was more effective than the flow-line condition in conveying motion, and cues and relevant pictorial background information increased accuracy of interpretation.