Autobiographical memory specificity among preschool-aged children.

Abstract

Overgeneral memory refers to difficulty retrieving specific autobiographical memories and is consistently associated with depression and/or trauma. The present study developed a downward extension of the Autobiographical Memory Test (AMT; Williams & Broadbent, 1986) given the need to document normative developmental changes in ability to retrieve specific memories among preschoolers. Confirmatory factor analysis and item response theory demonstrated that the AMT-Preschool Version maintained the same underlying 1-factor structure as the original. Additionally, the present study determined that child age was associated with increased specificity. Inhibitory control was evaluated as a potential mediator. Although age was related to inhibition, inhibition was unrelated to memory specificity. This finding adds to research suggesting that behavioral inhibition is unrelated to overgeneral memory among youth.

The Me in Memory: The Role of the Self in Autobiographical Memory Development

“…The current inquiry examined the relations between autobiographical memory, source memory for selfand other-referenced stimuli, and self-knowledge in children. Consistent with previous research, source monitoring ability increased with age across early childhood (Drummey & Newcombe, 2002;Foley & Johnson, 1985;Welch-Ross, 1995b), as did autobiographical memory (Hayne et al, 2011;Nuttall et al, 2014;Tustin & Hayne, 2010), and self-descriptive details (Eder, 1989(Eder, , 1990Harter, 1999;Montmayor & Eisen, 1977). We also found the expected ageinvariant memory advantage for both actions and objects encoded in a self-referent context (see Cunningham et al, 2014).…”

“…Using mirror selfrecognition to test Howe and colleagues' theory limits the period of qualitative change to the period of 18-24 months. However, amnesia persists beyond infancy, as reflected in the slow growth of memories for events in early childhood (Hayne, Gross, McNamee, Fitzgibbon, & Tustin, 2011;Nuttall, Valentino, Comas, McNeill, & Stey, 2014;Tustin & Hayne, 2010). Howe and colleagues argue that the gradual offset of childhood amnesia is related to gradual development in the self-concept, strengthening the anchor to which memories are attached.…”

Coping style and memory specificity in adolescents and adults with histories of child sexual abuse

“…The ability to recall specific memories develops as children age (e.g., Nelson, 1990;Nuttall et al, 2014). Our findings suggest that this capacity continues to develop from adolescence into adulthood.…”

“…In typically developing children, the ability to report more specific memories increases with age (Nelson & Fivush, 2004;Nuttall, Valentino, Comas, McNeil, & Stey, 2014) presumably due to developmental advances in, for example, language skills, knowledge base, strategy use, and storage capacity (Howe & Courage, 1997). To the extent that memory is still developing during early adolescence (Ogle et al, 2013), teens may evince less specificity, that is, greater rAMS, than adults.…”

A narrative synthesis of the applicability of the CaR–FA–X model in child and adolescent populations: a systematic review

“…There are also written versions of the AMT in which participants are asked to write down their memories to the cue words (Raes, Verstraeten, Bijttebier, Vasey, & Dalgleish, 2010), a pre-school version (the AMT-PV; Nuttall et al, 2014), a constrained version which asks participants to recall memories for events 24 hours post trauma (Nixon, Ball, Sterk, Best, & Betty, 2013, study 1) and a minimal instruction version of the task (Debeer et al, 2009) to name a few. Research with adults has suggested that the original ATM (Williams & Broadbent, 1986) may not be sensitive enough to assess memory specificity in non-clinical samples (Debeer et al, 2009).…”