Children remember childhood: implications for childhood amnesia

Children's recall 1 or 2 years after an event.

“…Whereas we found a reduction in accuracy over long delays, accuracy has been maintained over long delays in other studies (e.g., Fivush & Schwarzmueller, 1998; Hudson & Fivush, 1991; Salmon & Pipe, 1997). One reason for the apparent inconsistency is that gist-related errors may be less readily detected when verification of children’s reports is based on children’s retrospective accounts, as in the studies by Hamond and Fivush (1991) and Fivush and Schwarzmueller (1998), whereas in the present study, the experimenter’s knowledge of the event allowed gist-related errors to be detected. Another possible reason is that highly distinctive or unique events are generally remembered well over long delays (e.g., Fivush & Schwarzmueller, 1998; Fivush & Shukat, 1995).…”

“…Consistent with previous studies, decreases in accuracy [correct/(correct + errors)] were small in free recall over both the 1-and 2-year delays and were reliable only for the younger children. Children's reports at the long delays included new, accurate information; nearly one half of the correct information recalled following a 2-year delay (Study 1) and one third of that recalled following a 1-year delay (Study 2) had not previously been reported in earlier interviews, consistent with previous reports that delayed accounts contain a considerable amount of new information (for reviews, see Fivush & Schwarzmueller, 1998;Fivush & Shukat, 1995). However, there was also inaccurate information introduced for the first time at the long delays, particularly when children were prompted with cue items, with the result that information reported for the first time following long delays was significantly less accurate than information repeated across interviews.…”

Childhood amnesia in the making: Different distributions of autobiographical memories in children and adults.

“…The 7-year-olds remembered 60% of the events, whereas the 8-and 9-year-olds remembered only 36% and 34% of the events, respectively. Similar findings have been reported by Cleveland and Reese (2008) and Peterson, Grant, and Boland (2005; though see Fivush & Schwarzmueller, 1998, for suggestions of more robust retention). There also is evidence that the younger the child, the more rapid the loss from memory.…”

On telling the whole story: Facts and interpretations in autobiographical memory narratives from childhood through midadolescence.

“…Older children and adolescents told more elaborated narratives, with pairwise comparisons showing that age increases from age 5 to age 11 are nonsignificant ( p < .06), that 7-year-olds and 11-year-olds did not differ from one another, and that the large increase in elaboration from middle childhood to age 16 is significant ( p < .01). As in Study 1 and prior research (Davis, 1999; Fivush & Schwarzmueller, 1989), girls were more elaborative ( M = 12.6; SEM = 0.9) than boys ( M = 7.7; SEM = 0.9). The interaction of age group and gender was also straightforward, as shown by the data in Table 4.…”