The Me in Memory: The Role of the Self in Autobiographical Memory Development

Abstract

This article tests the hypothesis that self‐development plays a role in the offset of childhood amnesia; assessing the importance of both the capacity to anchor a memory to the self‐concept, and the strength of the self‐concept as an anchor. This research demonstrates for the first time that the volume of 3‐ to 6‐year old's specific autobiographical memories is predicted by both the volume of their self‐knowledge, and their capacity for self‐source monitoring within self‐referencing paradigms (N = 186). Moreover, there is a bidirectional relation between self and memory, such that autobiographical memory mediates the link between self‐source monitoring and self‐knowledge. These predictive relations suggest that the self‐memory system is active in early childhood.

A Developmental Study of the Self‐Prioritization Effect in Children Between 6 and 10 Years of Age

“…We could demonstrate clear SPEs in children. Following previous studies using both evaluative and incidental SRE paradigms (Cunningham et al, , ; Ross et al, ), the present task provides a measure of the self‐advantage which is precise , by quantifying a specific self‐related increase of their response speed, online , by capturing this self‐advantage in real time, and which avoids familiarity effects elicited by own faces. Further research is required with 7 year‐old as well as with younger children (6 years of age and less) in order to determine the age at which such perceptual self‐biases emerge.…”

“…Their participants were presented with their own or another child's face in the middle of the screen, and were simply asked to report on which side of the screen (right or left) the object had been presented. In such minimal form of self–related information processing conditions, an SRE has been obtained (see also Ross et al, , in 3–6 year‐old children). These results led the authors to conclude that the children's SRE did not require high‐level and effortful processes, but might also be driven by automatic attentional response.…”

“…In order to make the task easier for younger children, some researchers have used pictorial evaluative encoding tasks, in which a concrete object was evaluated with reference to the self or to other represented through cartoon figures depicted with their own or another child's face. The figures were shown pointing at an object (Ross et al, , Experiment 2; Sui & Zhu, ), using it (Ross et al, , Experiments 1, 3 and 4), owning it (“ownership paradigm”: Cunningham et al, ; Ross et al, , Experiment 7; Ross, Hutchison, & Cunningham, ), or simply liking it (Cunningham et al, , Experiments 1 and 2). With such age‐appropriate tasks, these studies demonstrated an SRE in children as young as 5‐year‐olds (Sui & Zhu, ), 4‐year‐olds (Cunningham et al, , ) and even 3‐year‐olds (Ross et al, ), in the subsequent recognition test (“is the object new or old?”) and source memory test (“was the old object presented with self or with other?”; Cunningham et al, , Experiments 2 and 3; Ross et al, ).…”

“…In this view, it is because the self is a well‐developed and often‐used construct, involving an increasing depth of processing (Craik & Lockhart, ) and promoting both elaboration and organization of encoded information, that self‐related memory traces are more accessible and subsequently more easily retrieved than non‐self‐related memory traces (e.g., Andersen, Glassman, & Gold, ; Keenan, Golding, & Brown, ; Klein, Loftus, & Schell, ). Yet, the use of pictorial evaluative encoding tasks involving self‐face (e.g., Cunningham et al, ; Ross et al, , ; Sui & Zhu, ) suggest that attention bias may also contribute to the SRE, with the mere presence of children's own face, because of its high familiarity, eliciting an implicit activation of the self. In this line, another research led to the alternate explanation that the SRE is likely to rather result from low‐level, automatic processes, which are responses to self‐cues (Cunningham et al, , p. 820).…”

Empirical Evidence Supporting Neural Contributions to Episodic Memory Development in Early Childhood: Implications for Childhood Amnesia

“…This shift marks the transition from Piaget’s preoperational stage to the concrete operational stage, and signifies increased sophistication of children’s thinking across numerous domains of cognition (e.g., categorical reasoning, perspective taking, metamemory, strategy use; Piaget & Inhelder, ). Second, developments in language, theory of mind, executive function, and self‐concept (e.g., increases in self‐knowledge and the capacity for self‐source monitoring) also occur and relate to improvements in autobiographical memory (e.g., Ross, Hutchison, & Cunningham, ). Third, studies suggest that the purpose of memory (i.e., what children need to remember) may change during this period.…”