Mark L. Howe

On resolving the enigma of infantile amnesia.

Historical and current theories of infantile amnesia are examined. To evaluate the viability of these theories, as well as the phenomenon of infantile amnesia itself, a review of memory development from birth through the preschool years is provided, including an overview of relevant perceptual and neurological maturation. In the context of this review, extant theories of infantile amnesia are shown to falter, and it is concluded that infantile amnesia is a chimera of a previously unexplored relationship between the development of a cognitive sense of self and the personalization of event memory. This hypothesis is examined in detail and discussed in the context of related developments in language and social cognition.

The Development of forgetting and reminiscence

Many theoretical positions on memory development anticipate that forgetting rates should vary substantially with age. The nature of these age variations is also relevant to many applied questions about child development that have major social policy implications, such as the veracity of childrens eyewitness testimony and the long-term effectiveness of classroom instruction. Surprisingly, developmental studies of long-term retention have repeatedly produced the puzzling finding that forgetting rates are age invariant. It now seems, however, that these null age trends may have been artifacts of variables such as measurement insensitivity, floor effects, and stages-of-learning confounds. Assuming, as some later studies suggest, that forgetting rates vary with age when these factors are controlled, there are three overriding questions that must be dealt with in the developmental analysis of forgetting: the relative importance of storage failure versus retrieval failure, the relative importance of true forgetting processes versus test-induced processes, and the relative importance of storage-based reminiscence versus retrieval-based reminiscence. We describe a framework (disintegration/redintegation theory) that provides a conceptual environment within which research on these questions can progress. This framework, which evolved from fuzzy-trace theory, reinterprets processes such as storage failure, retrieval failure, restorage, and retrieval relearning in terms of levels of featural integration in traces (i.e., the extent to which contextual information is integrated with core semantic gist to produce a coherent representation). The theory is implemented in a mathematical model (the trace-integrity model) whose parameters deliver measurements of relevant memory processes on a common ratio scale. In a series of experiments, the model was used to study the theorys predictions about the contributions of these memory processes to long-term retention in subjects between the ages of 7 and 70. All the experiments were standard long-term retention designs (an initial acquisition session, followed by a 1-2-week forgetting interval, followed by a series of retention tests).(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)

Emerging themes in cognitive development

Part of a two-volume work that offers the full spectrum of current knowledge and research trends in cognitive developmental psychology, this particular book traces the development of cognitive competence, denoting a change in cognitive proficiency, understanding or mastery. It includes an analysis of innovative and previously unpublished studies. The primary challenge issued by the authors is to ensure the incorporation of new knowledge into educational practices.

Development of long-term retention

The controversy over the reliability of childrens eyewitness testimony has helped to stimulate a renewed interest in the study of long-term retention. This study presents new and previously unpublished findings on long-term memory retention, and outlines the most important questions that have recently surfaced in the field. The contributors grapple with a number of key issues in long-term retention, including the extent to which a change in what is remembered is the result of alterations of the memories themselves in storage as well as alterations in how such memories are retrieved, how memories can be inoculated against forgetting, and how memories that are apparently gone can be reinstated.

Misleading children's story recall: Forgetting and reminiscence of the facts.

Reasons for the transient nature of misinformation effects in childrens long-term recollection are discussed. Two of the key issues are initial encoding confounds and analytical insensitivity. A recently developed model of long-term retention that eliminates these problems is outlined and used to analyze the data from two experiments on childrens (kindergarten and Grade 2) story recall. The main results show that (a) misinformation effects were small in magnitude and were directly related to rate of forgetting, not age, (b) developmental differences in retention were controlled by forgetting, particularly storage failures, and (c) reminiscence occurred across test trials and increased the probability of correct factual recall. These results clearly demonstrate that when initial encoding is controlled and appropriate measurement techniques are in place, age and misinformation effects are independent

How Can I Remember When "I" Wasn′t There: Long-Term Retention of Traumatic Experiences and Emergence of the Cognitive Self

Abstract In this article, we focus on two issues, namely, the nature and onset of very early personal memories, especially for traumatic events, and the role of stress in long-term retention. We begin by outlining a theory of early autobiographical memory, one whose unfolding is coincident with emergence of the cognitive self. It is argued that it is not until this self emerges that personal memories will remain viable over extended periods of time. We illustrate this with 25 cases of young children′s long-term retention of early traumatic events involving emergency room treatment. On the basis of both qualitative (case profiles) and quantitative (analysis of covariance) analyses, we conclude that (a) very young children (under the age of 2 years) retain limited memories for events which they commonly express behaviorally, (b) coherent autobiographical memories are not constructed until the child develops a cognitive sense of self (on average, at 24 months of age), (c) autobiographical memories for traumatic events are essentially no different from those for nontraumatic events, (d) stress is only related to long-term retention inasmuch as it is one variable that serves to make an event unique, and (e) like nontraumatic events, traumatic memories lose peripheral details during the retention interval and retain the central components of the event. These results are discussed both in terms of their implications for theories of early autobiographical memory as well as the ways in which we might differentiate implanted (or false) memories and authentic memories for traumatic events.

On the Development of Forgetting.

BRAINERD, CHARLES J.; KINGMA, JOHANNES; and HOWE, MARK L. On the Development of Forgetting. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1985, 56, 1103-1119. 3 conceptual issues are discussed that make the data of previous developmental studies of forgetting difficult to interpret, namely, stages-of-learning confounds, failure to separate forgetting per se from various performance factors that operate on retention tests, and failure to disentangle the relative contributions of storage-based forgetting and retrieval-based forgetting to retention test performance. A paradigm and model are presented that deal with these problems. Application of the model to the data of 4 experiments, 3 with elementary schoolers and 1 with adolescents, produced these major findings. (a) Contrary to previous studies, there were clear developmental trends in long-term retention that usually favored older children over younger children. (b) There were developmental trends in forgetting processes per se, again usually favoring older children, but these effects were confined to retrieval forgetting rather than storage forgetting. (c) There were developmental trends in the ability to relearn retrieval algorithms during long-term retention tests, with some types of relearning favoring older children and other types of relearning favoring younger children. (d) There were some important asymmetries between childrens performance during acquisition of a list and their performance on long-term retention tests. This suggests that forgetting and acquisition are governed by quite different laws and hence require different theoretical assumptions.

Valence and the development of immediate and long-term false memory illusions

Across five experiments we examined the role of valence in childrens and adults’ true and false memories. Using the Deese/Roediger-McDermott paradigm and either neutral or negative-emotional lists, both adults’ (Experiment 1) and childrens (Experiment 2) true recall and recognition was better for neutral than negative items, and although false recall was also higher for neutral items, false recognition was higher for negative items. The last three experiments examined adults’ (Experiment 3) and childrens (Experiments 4 and 5) 1-week long-term recognition of neutral and negative-emotional information. The results replicated the immediate recall and recognition findings from the first two experiments. More important, these experiments showed that although true recognition decreased over the 1-week interval, false recognition of neutral items remained unchanged whereas false recognition of negative-emotional items increased. These findings are discussed in terms of theories of emotion and memory as well as their forensic implications.

Development of children's long term retention

Abstract It is well known that much of everyday cognition relies on both the ability to acquire information and the ability to retain it over extended time intervals. Theories of memory development must, therefore, include assumptions about the processes that govern long-term retention of information as well as processes that regulate its acquisition. Unfortunately, while much is known about the development of acquisition processes, considerably less is known about the ontogeny of long-term retention. In this article, we discuss reasons for this discrepancy, and we review extant research on childrens amnesia and hypermnesia. As the review unfolds, a number of methodological and measurement problems are examined, and a new theoretical framework is presented that is implemented in a mathematical model. We show how application of this framework eliminates the indicated problems.

On the susceptibility of adaptive memory to false memory illusions

Previous research has shown that survival-related processing of word lists enhances retention for that material. However, the claim that survival-related memories are more accurate has only been examined when true recall and recognition of neutral material has been measured. In the current experiments, we examined the adaptive memory superiority effect for different types of processing and material, measuring accuracy more directly by comparing true and false recollection rates. Survival-related information and processing was examined using word lists containing backward associates of neutral, negative, and survival-related critical lures and type of processing (pleasantness, moving, survival) was varied using an incidental memory paradigm. Across four experiments, results showed that survival-related words were more susceptible than negative and neutral words to the false memory illusion and that processing information in terms of its relevance to survival independently increased this susceptibility to the false memory illusion. Overall, although survival-related processing and survival-related information resulted in poorer, not more accurate, memory, such inaccuracies may have adaptive significance. These findings are discussed in the context of false memory research and recent theories concerning the importance of survival processing and the nature of adaptive memory.