To ask or not to ask: strategic recall, but not spontaneous recall, decreases by the passage of time in 46-month-olds' memory of a unique event.

Abstract

Children's ability to intentionally recall events lessens with temporal distance to the occurrence. However, little is known about the effects of retention time on memories that emerge spontaneously. We examined spontaneous and strategic retrieval in eighty-one 46-month-olds' memory of a lab event after 1 week (the 1-week Condition) versus 43weeks (the 43-weekCondition) in a between-subjects design, using well-established procedures (Krøjgaard et al., in Consciousness and Cognition 55(91): 105, 2017). While spontaneous recall showed no significant effect of retention, the children's strategic recall was negatively affected: even though the children overall still remembered the event, the children in the 43-week Condition showed reduced voluntary recall compared to the children in the 1-week Condition. To our knowledge, this is the first study to assess spontaneous recall after such a long retention interval. The findings add to existing evidence of two modes of retrieval in early childhood and are of both theoretical and forensic relevance.