The Development of Episodic Memory

Abstract

Episodic memory involves the formation of relational structures that bind information about the stimuli people experience to the contexts in which they experience them. The ability to form and retain such structures may be at the core of the development of episodic memory. In the first experiment reported here, 4- and 7-year-olds were presented with paired-associate learning tasks requiring memory structures of different complexity. A multinomial-processing tree model was applied to estimate the use of different structures in the two age groups. The use of two-way list-context-to-target structures and three-way structures was found to increase between the ages of 4 and 7. Experiment 2 demonstrated that the ability to form increasingly complex relational memory structures develops between the ages of 4 and 7 years and that this development extends well into adulthood. These results have important implications for theories of memory development.

Episodic memory and future thinking during early childhood: Linking the past and future

“…For instance, although 4-year-olds can verbally recall factual information learned in an experimental setting, the ability to link this information with the corresponding source (e.g., puppet, experimenter) continues to improve through at least 8 years of age (Drummey & Newcombe, 2002; Rajan, Cuevas, & Bell, 2014). Similar patterns have been found using object-background binding tasks (Lloyd et al 2009) as well as tasks that involve personally experienced events (Bauer, Doydum, Pathman, Larkina, Güeler, & Burch, 2012) with recent evidence of more advanced binding emerging between 7 years and adulthood (Yim, Dennis, & Sloutsky, 2013). …”

When Delays Improve Memory

“…Future research would need to also examine precise developmental time course of these effects by including multiple age groups and identifying memory parameters accounting for developmental change (cf. Howe, Brainerd, & Kingma, 1985; Yim et al, 2013). …”

“…Catastrophic interference could also be prevented by binding each item and a context, such as <A-Context 1 > →X and <A-Context 2 > → Y. In general, binding individual elements into configural memory structures should reduce overlap between similar memories and as a result reduce vulnerability to interference compared to more simple structures (Darby & Sloutsky, 2015; Humphreys, Bain, & Pike, 1989; O’Reilly & Rudy, 2001; Yim, Dennis, & Sloutsky, 2013). The reported developmental differences in RI suggest that only adults, but not young children, encoded stimulus information configurally.…”

Evolutionary Shaping of Adult Hippocampal Neurogenesis in Mammals–Cognitive Gain or Developmental Priming of Personality Traits?

“…This view might have explained some typical transitions in human life history such as the emergence of long-term memory at the expense of short-term memory in children (Yim et al, 2013; Akers et al, 2014). Likewise, it would have fitted the transition from exuberant and reckless juvenile behavior to cautious adult behavior—a characteristic of the maturation of the hippocampus as postulated by Altman et al (1973).…”