Children's memory for a mild stressor: The role of sympathetic activation and parasympathetic withdrawal

Abstract

Although numerous studies have examined the relations between stress and memory in children, few studies have investigated physiological responses as predictors of children's memory for stressful events. In this study, 4-to 8-year-olds completed laboratory challenges and experienced a fire-alarm incident while their sympathetic and parasympathetic reactions were monitored. Shortly afterward, children's memory of the alarm incident was tested. As children's age and family income increased, memory performance improved. High sympathetic activation during the laboratory challenges was associated with enhanced memory. Also, a trend indicated that, among older children, greater general parasympathetic withdrawal was associated with poorer memory, but among younger children, parasympathetic withdrawal was unrelated to memory. Findings highlight the need to measure both sympathetic and parasympathetic responses when evaluating children's memory for mild stressors and to include a wide age range so that developmental changes in the relations between stress and memory in childhood can be identified.

Development in the neurophysiology of emotion processing and memory in school-age children

“…For example, 2.5-11-year-old children's recall of a devastating tornado was more robust and complete than for neutral events from the same time period (Ackil et al, 2003). Further, 4-8-year-olds' memory for a stressful fire alarm event (Quas et al, 2006) and fearful film clip (Quas and Lench, 2007) was positively related to physiological arousal during encoding. Beyond informing patterns of emotional memory, examinations of stress elucidate the processes and outcomes underlying real-world stressful experience.…”

“…The primary purpose of collecting multiple measures of emotion responses is to provide convergent assessment of the extent to which the stimuli are experienced as emotional. Further, given the argument presented in the adult literature, as well as findings from the stress literature showing enhancing effects of arousal on memory encoding in the early school years (Ackil et al, 2003;Quas et al, 2006;Quas and Lench, 2007), we hypothesized that greater emotional arousal associated with emotional scenes would predict better subsequent memory versus neutral scenes in older children (indicated by larger recognition responses in behavior and ERP for emotional versus neutral stimuli), who have a more developed (and connected) emotionmemory network, than younger children. Because memory for lab-controlled positive and negative emotional stimuli has yet to be examined in children under 7, and limited evidence shows emotion effects on memory in older children, we conducted exploratory analysis of age effects, to determine possible developmental change during this period.…”

“…Substantial research has focused on memory for stressful negative events, ranging in arousal from fear-eliciting video clips, to fire alarms, to invasive medical procedures (e.g., Quas et al, 1999Quas et al, , 2006Quas and Lench, 2007). This work informs patterns of emotional memory.…”

Cardiac vagal control and children's adaptive functioning: A meta-analysis

“…Initial studies do show that children with higher vagal withdrawal scores, indicative of better emotion regulation, perform better on cognitive and academic tasks (Blair & Peters, 2003; Katz & Gottman, 1997; Quas, Bauer, & Boyce, 2004). Once again, however, these findings are equivocal as some studies do not find such an association (Quas, Carrick, Alkon, Goldstein, & Boyce, 2006) or find a more quadratic association (Marcovitch et al, 2010). Hence, it may be more adaptive for children to have a lower RSA withdrawal response to less emotionally based cognitive or academic tasks which may free up metabolic resources for attention and memory processes important for the task at hand.…”

Maltreated Children's Memory of Stressful Removals from Their Biological Parents

“…Researchers have explored this both through laboratory studies and examination of children's memories of real-life events. Experimental studies have included children's susceptibility to real-life events, the use of video clips in laboratory settings, laboratory challenges and fire alarm incidents (Thierry & Spence, 2004;Quas, Carrick, Alkon, Goldstein, & Boyce, 2006;Quas & Lench, 2007;Van Abbema & Bauer, 2005). Taking a different approach, naturalistic studies have assessed children's memories of real events such as natural disasters (Fivush, Sales, Goldberg, Bahrick, & Parker, 2004), their recollection of mild and painful medical procedures (Baker-Ward, Ornstein, Larus, & Clubb, 1993;Quas, Goodman, Bidrose, Pipe, Craw, & Ablin, 1999a, 1999b and their memories of unanticipated emergency medical procedures (Howe, Courage, & Peterson, 1995;Peterson & Whalen, 2001).…”