The influence of prior knowledge and repeated questioning on children's long-term retention of the details of a pediatric examination.

Abstract

Children's recall of the details of pediatric examinations was examined over the course of a 6-month interval. Although the 83 4- to 7-year-old participants reported a substantial amount of information at each assessment, performance declined over time, dropping sharply over the course of 3 months but then remaining constant out to the final interview at 6 months. As expected, older children provided more total information than younger children did and reported a greater proportion of the event components in response to general rather than specific questions. However, comparable patterns of remembering and forgetting over time were observed at each age level. In addition, no effects of repeated questioning--in the form of an interview at 3 months for half of the children--were observed on performance at the 6-month assessment. Moreover, children's prior knowledge about routine doctor visits was assessed before the checkup for half of the participants at each age and was associated with initial but not delayed recall. Although knowledge increased with age as expected, it nonetheless affected recall over and above the influence of age.

Anxious and nonanxious children’s recall of a repeated or unique event

“…However, we do not yet know the nature of a potential interaction between stress and event frequency. As part of their study on children's memory for stressful dental procedures, Vandermaas and colleagues (1993) collected parental reports of 4-and 5-year-olds' and 7-and 8-year-olds' prior experience with the participating dentist (see also Ornstein et al, 2006). When the amount of prior experience was statistically controlled, a previously significant interaction between age and stress (i.e., anxiety reduced correct responses for older children but not for younger children) disappeared.…”

A Decade Later: Adolescents' Memory for Medical Emergencies

“…For example, reinstating interviews had little effect on 6-year-old children's recall of a magic lesson (Gee & Pipe, 1995), even a year later (Pipe, Gee, Wilson, & Egerton, 1999), or on young children's recall of a pediatric checkup (Ornstein et al, 2006), or on 3-to 5-year-olds' memory of playing in a lab (Quas et al, 2007). However, it is important to emphasize that in these studies, there was little suggestive questioning or misinformation introduced, and so these issues are not considered here.…”

Anxious and Nonanxious Children's Face Identification

“…Both groups showed a decline in memory performance over time, with a more pronounced effect of delay in 6-year-olds. A similar decline in recall performance was observed by Ornstein et al (2006), who found 4-year-olds to 7-year-olds' memory of a pediatric examination was far worse after 6 months than it was immediately after the examination. The results have differed, however, when retention of stressful events has been tested after even longer delays.…”