Developmental Trajectories of Associative Memory from Childhood to Adulthood: A Behavioral and Neuroimaging Study

Abstract

Episodic memory refers to the capacity to bind multimodal memories to constitute a unique personal event. Most developmental studies on episodic memory focused on one specific component, i.e., the core factual information. The present study examines the relevance of a novel episodic paradigm to assess its developmental trajectories in a more comprehensive way according to the type of association (item-feature, item-location, and item-sequence associations) with measures of both objective and subjective recollection. We conducted a behavioral study aimed at testing the effects of age in a large sample of 160 children, adolescents, and young adults (6–23 years old). We confronted the behavioral data to the neural correlates in a subgroup of 30 children using voxel-based morphometry. Behavioral data outlined differential developmental trajectories according to the type of association, with a continuous increase of factual associative memory efficiency until 10 years, a linear increase of performance in spatial associative memory that pursues until early adulthood and an abrupt increase in temporal associative memory efficiency between 9 and 10. Regarding recollection, measures showed a more pronounced enhancement from 9 to 10 years. Hence, behavioral data highlight a peculiar period in late childhood (8–10 years old) crucial for the developmental time course of episodic memory. Regarding structural data, we found that the improvement of associative memory efficiency was related to a decrease in gray matter volume in a large cerebral network including the dorsolateral and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (and superior and anterior temporal regions), and the hippocampus bilaterally. These data suggest that multimodal integration would probably be related to the maturation of temporal regions and modulated by a fronto-parietal network. Besides, our findings emphasize the relevance of the present paradigm to assess episodic memory especially in the clinical setting.

A Time and Place for Everything: Developmental Differences in the Building Blocks of Episodic Memory

“…This pattern of results is consistent with that reported by Guillery‐Girard et al. (), albeit the comparison in that study was made using two different behavioral tasks.…”

“…While initial research had suggested that binding reached adult‐like operation in early childhood (Lloyd et al., ; Sluzenski et al., ), manipulating the episodic representation was associated with robust and diverging age‐related improvements in memory, despite using methods that should have substantially reduced the use and efficacy of controlled processes (e.g., encoding strategies; Bjorklund et al., ; Ghetti & Angelini, ), the predominate explanation of developmental improvements in episodic memory. These results are consistent with prior neuroimaging research that suggests a developing functional role of the hippocampus to binding operations (e.g., DeMaster & Ghetti, ; Guillery‐Girard et al., ; Lee et al., ). Together these data support the hypothesis that binding operations substantively contribute to episodic memory development in middle and late childhood.…”

“…However, several studies do hint at the possibility that distinct trajectories may be observed. In two cross‐sectional studies examining memory for both item–space and item–time relations, memory for item–space relations was superior to memory for item–time relations in early middle childhood (Picard, Cousin, Guillery‐Girard, Eustache, & Piolino, ), but item–time memory may improve substantially in late childhood (Guillery‐Girard et al., ) and adolescence (Picard et al., ). These results are consistent with evidence that memory for temporal order of autobiographical memories seems particularly fragile until at least middle childhood (Pathman, Doydum, & Bauer, ), despite being present in infancy (Bauer & Leventon, ; Riggins, ).…”

More Effective Consolidation of Episodic Long‐Term Memory in Children Than Adults—Unrelated to Sleep

“…This is in contrast to a previous study by Guillery‐Girard et al. (), which also confirms the age between 9 and 10 years as a critical step in episodic development but rather suggests that memory for where events occur improves up until adulthood. This slow development appears to be partly due to the protracted maturation of the brain structures involved in episodic memory formation (Ghetti & Bunge, ; Gogtay et al., ).…”

Reduced Prefrontal Activation in Pediatric Patients With Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder During Verbal Episodic Memory Encoding

“…This age range covers different developmental stages, such as pre-and post-puberty, which might increase variability in brain structure and functions (especially regarding development of PFC), including memory 88 . This large developmental window could have accounted for the higher variance in task performance and, as a consequence, reduced the likelihood of finding significant group differences.…”