Week 8 – Memory Development Exams marks on-line Finalize your topic soon! Small assignment due November 18th

Week 8; Memory Atkinson & Shiffrin’s model revisited

Information Processing System (Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1968) Sensory Register Input from outside Attention Working memory: holds info for short time; can do stuff with it Response : via recognition or recall Executive Functions: plan and perform each step of info processing Long-term memory: Permanent store of info; knowledge about world; past events; procedures; Meta- knowledge Storage Retrieval

Week 8; Memory Atkinson & Shiffrin’s model revisited Long-term memory includes declarative and procedural memory Declarative composed of episodic and semantic; Focus is on the declarative part of memory Memory is not one thing, and resides in different areas

Relevant Definitions Recall  Free – straight remembering with no help  Cued – some kind of “hint” given Recognition  Similar to cued recall, but less of a hint Location memory  A-not-B  Spatial span

Corsi Blocks task

Relevant Definitions Recall  Free – straight remembering with no help  Cued – some kind of “hint” given Recognition  Similar to cued recall, but usually a choice involved Location memory  A-not-B  Spatial span Context-independent learning  Kinds of tasks usually tapped in lab work

Infantile Amnesia We don’t tend to have very early memories: Why? Vygotsky’s theory  Learning with parent’s and teacher’s help Piaget’s Theory  Lack of symbolic thought  “Cognitive Structures” aren’t in place to develop memories Information-Processing  Can’t attend efficiently; language allows top-down processing  Fuzzy-Trace Theory

Favoured explanations… Lack of correspondence between encoding mechanisms and later retrieval cues Brain structures not yet in place Lack of sense of self

Memory in Babies Was once thought to be impossible Rovee-Collier and colleagues’ mobile paradigm Used conditioning paradigm with 2 month olds 3 phases:  Baseline (3 minutes)  Training (9 minutes)  Retention (after a delay of hours to days)

Memory in Babies 2 Babies as young as 3 months have shown retention up to 2 weeks Babies younger than 2 months for shorter times (a few days) Context is important in this task Environment specificity  Crib and room variations Mobile specificity  Visual Pop-out effect

T T T T T T P

P P P P P P T

R R R R R R P

P P P P P P R

Memory in Babies 3 A-not-B task (Diamond)  Must impose longer and longer delays to elicit error with age: related to memory for location Sequencing of mobiles  Will remember 3 mobiles in particular order they were presented Deferred Imitation  Barr, Vieira, & Rovee-Collier (2001)  Showed imitation in 6-month-olds  Showed priming and association memory for this imitation

Implicit Memory Exercise

Complete the word stems awa___sno___ dro___ste___ mon___cri___ ban___rec___ cus___ben___

Implicit Memory Exercise Refers to incidental learning that occurs when you are not trying to learn Does not seem to change much over lifespan  Children in learning pictures: explicit memories improve, implicit do not (i.e. always pretty good)  E.g. habituation / dishabituation

Event Memory Script-based memory develops around 3; this is when children recognize relevant aspects of an event They will remember repeated events, rather than isolated ones However, more significant events can be remembered with prompting and questioning  Liwag & Stein, 1995  Burgwyn-Bailes, Baker-Ward, Gordon, & Ornstein, 2001

Source-monitoring Children have trouble remembering who said what “I did it” bias  Doll and dollhouse tasks

Eyewitness Testimony - adults Adults are bad witnesses!  Class e.g.  Loftus’ work Adults susceptible to suggestion  Bransford & Franks  Age regression therapy Spanos, Burgess, Burgess, Samuel, & Blois, /78 participants had false recall, and nearly half reported very strong memories of the day after birth

Eyewitness Testimony Very young children won’t volunteer information Will give info when asked specific questions BUT risk of false information goes up, esp. in younger kids  With age, amount of false info goes down  Fuzzy-Trace theory

Can be susceptible to suggestion  Ceci & Bruck, 1993: 88% preschoolers susceptible to suggestion  Source-monitoring is a problem again  Repeated questioning may lead to false info.  Design of questions is important Poole & Lindsay, 1993

Eyewitness, continued Young children can acquire false memories  But must be plausible Can’t predict one kind of memory from another Factors affecting false recall:  Knowledge base  Characteristics of the interview process

Should we use children as eyewitnesses given susceptibility? Yes, but not under 5  (although may be ok younger, depending on trauma involved)

Suggestions for using Child Witnesses 1. Ask non-leading questions 2. Limit number of times they are interviewed * 3. “I don’t remember” is ok 4. Remain friendly and patient 5. Avoid family presence if topic is sensitive 6. Maybe use a videotape of early interview 7. Avoid props

Factors affecting children’s memory Knowledge-base  Older children always remember more than younger, even if no structure is imposed: they know more  If they know more about topic, they will remember more (applies to young and old)  The more knowledge they acquire, the more likely they are to make unlikely connections and remember Personal Relevance  Classmates example

Metamemory What children know about memory and memory processes 3 stages of remembering:  Diagnosis  Treatment  Monitoring Very young children overestimate what they know about the treatment phase, don’t think strategy will help Children don’t spontaneously use a strategy until they are years old, indicating lack of metamemory knowledge

Memory-Metamemory Connection Could be that improvements in memory retrieval leads to value placed on strategies, resulting in increased metamemory knowledge Maybe increased understanding of memory leads to strategy usage, and hence better retrieval Relationship seems to be an interaction

Lifespan Stability of Memory Implicit memory for benign events is in place quite early, as seen in infant research, and does not show age-related advances or declines Strategy use increases with age, indicating that explicit memory develops, and declines in old age Given than memory abilities vary according to task, seems to be domain-specific ability, with different abilities developing at different times

Lifespan changes in span Different span measures elicit different lifespan patterns (my dissertation )  Corsi blocks  Sequencing span (forward digit for kids)  Auditory working memory task

AgeCorsi Blocks** Span** (Digit* or Sequencing τ ) Auditory WM ** 5 year olds (N=31) 5.5 (0.3) 6.9 (1.8) 6.2 (1.4) 10.7 (5.1) year olds (N=32) 21.4 (1.7) 8.2 (1.6) 17.3 (4.7) 30.5 (4.6) year olds (N=33) 42.4 (2.6) 7.3 (1.6) 15.8 (4.3) 29.1 (4.8) year olds (N=32) 62.4 (2.6) 6.8 (1.3) 14.6 (3.9) 26.6 (5.1) Mean scores on span tasks

Review Exercise on Memory 1. Big name in baby memory with mobiles? ________________ 2. What develops first, scripts or specific events? 3. Can be created in young children through repeated questioning_______________ 4. True or false: There is no evidence of age- related changes in explicit memory. 5. Which of the following helps retrieval most: Free recall or cued recall?