Source memory deficits and frontal lobe functioning in children

Abstract

Thirty‐three children (aged 10 to 14 years old) were presented with a number of fictitious facts about famous individuals (e.g., Sylvester Stallone's favorite color is green). Subjects’ memories for this information was assessed by measures of fact recall (e.g., What is Sylvester Stallone's favorite color?) and source recall (e.g., Where did you first learn that green is Sylvester Stallone's favorite color?). Furthermore, all subjects were administered tests sensitive to frontal lobe functioning: the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) and a verbal fluency task. The incidence of errors on the source recall task was found to be related to children's performance on the WCST. Importantly, source error rates were not related to fact recall, digit span, or age. These results are consistent with previous findings that have documented a relationship between performance on tasks of frontal lobe function and source memory deficits in neurological patients as well as healthy, community‐dwelling elderly.