Children's Beliefs about Long-Term Retention

Abstract

In 2 experiments, we examined pre-school, grade 1, and grade 3 children's metamemory about long-term retention. Specifically, we examined beliefs about the type of information most likely to be forgotten and beliefs about the impact of suggestions and retroactive interference on memory. Children made and explained paired-comparison judgments concerning the differential forgetting of peripheral versus central information, whether misinformation effects would arise from suggestions by others, and whether retroactive interference would arise from experiencing two similar events. The major findings were that (a) most children believed that events central to a story would be retained better than peripheral details; (b) in preschool and first grade, children believed that memory was invulnerable to suggestion (from a parent or a sibling), but in third grade, children believed suggestion could adversely affect memory; (c) most preschoolers believed that retroactive interference effects would not occur, whereas most first and third graders acknowledged that they would; (d) older children believed that both suggestibility and interference were less likely given a retention interval of several months compared to 1 day; and (e) in explaining their beliefs, children assigned sensory-behavioral factors a major causal role in determining what would be remembered over the long term. These results are discussed in terms of the development of beliefs about memory and the mind in general.