Early Childhood Memories Research Articles

Developmental Differences in Relations Between Episodic Memory and Hippocampal Subregion Volume During Early Childhood.

Episodic memory shows striking improvement during early childhood. However, neural contributions to these behavioral changes are not well understood. This study examined associations between episodic memory and volume of subregions (head, body, and tail) of the hippocampus-a structure known to support episodic memory in school-aged children and adults-during early childhood (n = 45). Results revealed significant positive relations between episodic memory and volume of the hippocampal head in both the left and right hemispheres for 6- but not 4-year-old children, suggesting brain-behavior relations vary across development. These findings add new information regarding neural mechanisms of change in memory development during early childhood and suggest that developmental differences in hippocampal subregions may contribute to age-related differences in episodic memory ability.

Early childhood memory and attention as predictors of academic growth trajectories.

Longitudinal data from the children of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) were used to assess how well measures of short-term and working memory and attention in early childhood predicted longitudinal growth trajectories in mathematics and reading comprehension. Analyses also examined whether changes in memory and attention were more strongly predictive of changes in academic skills in early childhood than in later childhood. All predictors were significantly associated with academic achievement and years of schooling attained, although the latter was at least partially mediated by predictors’ effect on academic achievement in adolescence. The relationship of working memory and attention with academic outcomes was also found to be strong and positive in early childhood but nonsignificant or small and negative in later years. The study results provide support for a “fade-out” hypothesis, which suggests that underlying cognitive capacities predict learning in the early elementary grades, but the relationship fades by late elementary school. These findings suggest that whereas efforts to develop attention and memory may improve academic achievement in the early grades, in the later grades interventions that focus directly on subject matter learning are more likely to improve achievement. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)

Samgwangsa

Samgwangsa is an autoethnographic memoir that begins with the author’s early childhood memories of living in Korea with her mother, who became a “military bride” and the first Korean immigrant to settle in the author’s hometown. This piece questions what notions such as home, freedom, mobility, and the American dream mean under conditions of displacement. It chronicles the author’s desire to return to Korea with her mother, and through a life-long effort to do so, reveals new insights about kinship.

Language facilitates event memory in early childhood: Child comprehension, adult-provided linguistic support and delayed recall at 16 months

Adult-provided supportive language facilitates memory for the past in preverbal and verbal children. Work conducted with 18-month-olds indicates that children benefit from supportive adult language when tested after a 4-week delay but not when tested immediately after sequence demonstration; moreover, findings reveal that supportive language provided only at test may be more facilitative of recall after a delay relative to supportive language provided only at encoding. In the present study, we examined whether child language comprehension abilities moderated the extent to which preverbal children benefitted from supportive language provided at encoding and test. The findings indicated that child language comprehension and supportive language provided at encoding were unassociated with performance at baseline or immediate imitation; however, the moderating effect of child language comprehension on adult-provided supportive language at encoding and test was observed after a 1-week delay. Correlations revealed continuous associations between general comprehension scores and recall performance after the 1-week delay on sequences presented in the most supportive condition at encoding. Taken together, the presented findings reveal that the complex interplay between language and cognition is established in early childhood, with foundational relations emerging before children are capable of verbally reporting on the past.

Lucien E. Morris, MD, Aqualumnus, Inventor, Academic and Historian

Lucien E. Morris, MD, Aqualumnus, Inventor, Academic and Historian

The Self‐Reference Effect on Memory in Early Childhood

The self-reference effect in memory is the advantage for information encoded about self, relative to other people. The early development of this effect was explored here using a concrete encoding paradigm. Trials comprised presentation of a self- or other-image paired with a concrete object. In Study 1, 4- to 6-year-old children (N = 53) were asked in each trial whether the child pictured would like the object. Recognition memory showed an advantage for self-paired objects. Study 2 (N = 55) replicated this finding in source memory. In Study 3 (N = 56), participants simply indicated object location. Again, recognition and source memory showed an advantage for self-paired items. These findings are discussed with reference to mechanisms that ensure information of potential self-relevance is reliably encoded.

This is what I remember about Guatemala

This is what I carry with me when I write. First, one of my earliest childhood memories. I am four or five years old, a native Angeleno visiting his father’s hometown, Gualan, on the Motagua River. I have spent a day splashing in the shallow water, in a river that’s a protagonist in family sagas as yet unknown to me. I’ve waded among river stones and boulders, and I have taken ill. Night falls and I am lain out by my father on a concrete slab. Pungent ointments are applied to my skin by a medicine woman. A large group of relatives stands around me, whispering words in Spanish, while a bulb hovers over me with an electric glow. I am feverish, sweating, in a kind of waking dream, far from home, far from Los Angeles and the bungalow courtyard I call home – and I am closer than I can ever be to the place where my story begins. And then I return to Los Angeles, to the solitude of my life as an only-child of the only Guatemalan family I know, in a city of abundance in which there are no chatty uncles or grandparents or untamed rivers. Later, I am 11 or 12, visiting the home of my maternal grandfather, in Guatemala City’s Zona 7, in the Colonia 6 de octubre. The Spanish that’s been on my tongue from the time I could speak, first learned in Hollywood apartments from my parents, has begun to die. I am a North American proto-adolescent in a Guatemalan body. In Guatemala City, amid the concrete cubes, the narrow streets, the unpaved avenues, I feel bigger. I do things that make me look odd and eccentric to the people around me. For example, I plant myself alone in my grandfather’s tiny

Age, memory type, and the phenomenology of autobiographical memory: Findings from an Italian sample

The present research explored differences in phenomenology between two types of memories, a general self-defining memory and an earliest childhood memory. A sample of 76 Italian participants were selected and categorised into two age groups: 20–30 years and 31–40 years. The Memory Experiences Questionnaire (MEQ) was administered, taking note of latency and duration times of the narratives. Consistent with the literature, the self-defining memory differed significantly from the earliest childhood memory in terms of phenomenology, with the recency of the memory associated with more intense phenomenological experience. The self-defining memory took longer to retrieve and narrate than the earliest childhood memory. Meaningful differences also emerged between the two age groups: Participants in their 30s rated their self-defining memory as more vivid, coherent, and accessible than participants in their 20s. According to latency findings, these differences suggest an expanded period of identity consolidation for younger adults. Further applications of the MEQ should be carried out to replicate these results with other samples of young adults.

Electrophysiological Investigation of Source Memory in Early Childhood

Recollection is well-characterized in adults and school-aged children, yet little is known about how this ability develops in early childhood. This study utilized a behavioral source memory paradigm and event-related potentials (ERPs) to examine recollection in early childhood. ERPs were compared between items whose context was remembered and forgotten as well as new items. Activity late in the electrophysiological response showed a “recollection” effect, which differentiated items with correct source judgments from all others. This study is unique in that it is the first to provide information regarding the spatiotemporal dynamics of the neural networks underlying recollection during early childhood.

A Shared Struggle with Tobacco Addiction

Smoking is up close and personal for me and I have been humbled by how difficult it is to stop. I come from a family of smokers and married into a family of smokers. Both my grandfather and father died of lung cancer. Among my earliest childhood memories, is being woken each morning by my father’s coughing and the ever-present pack of Camels next to my grandfather’s favorite chair. It was easy to start smoking in high school; in fact, didn’t all the cool kids smoke? And yes, I believed it increased my concentration and made me a sharper college girl. And I admit to raising my sons in a house filled with smoke, my husband and I both smoking away despite the clear evidence about the dangers.

The role of culture and self-construal in autobiographical memories of US and Turkish college students

This study examined memory variables both cross-culturally and across four cultural self-construal types. US (N=240) and Turkish (N=174) college students described their earliest childhood memory, and another significant childhood memory, and completed the Balanced Integration-Differentiation (BID) Scale (Imamoglu, 1998; 2003), which measured relatedness and individuation, and allowed for the classification of students into four different self-construal types (Related-Individuated, Separated-Individuated, Related-Patterning, Separated-Patterning). At the cultural level US students' earliest memories were dated approximately 6 months earlier, had greater volume, and were more positive. US students also reported memories as more important. Turkish students' memories had more detail, a higher proportion of propositions, self-, other- and we-related words, and higher other–self ratios, and they were clearer than those of US students. Turkish students also reported greater ease in describing their earliest memory in words. At the level of self-construal the primary differences were between students high in both relatedness and individuation and those low in both. The culture by BID interaction was significant in only 1 of the more than 24 analyses.

Editorial Story: International common ground in school librarianship

The lure of the story is what often attracts us to the profession of school librarianship. Early childhood memories of hearing stories at bedtime and around the campfire, being read to, attending story times in the public and school library, and choosing and owning our first books, are powerful and enduring. Listening to stories even has the capacity to alter our consciousness and place us in what researcher Brian Sturm (1999) calls a "storytelling trance." Simple storytelling, with its origins in primiti ve times, can form a foundation for an interest in reading and lifelong learning.

Exploring early self‐referential memory effects through ownership

The self-reference effect (SRE) is the reliable memory advantage for information encoded about self over material encoded about other people. The developmental pathway of the SRE has proved difficult to chart, because the standard SRE task is unsuitable for young children. The current inquiry was designed to address this issue using an ownership paradigm, as encoding objects in the context of self-ownership have been shown to elicit self-referential memory advantages in adults. Pairs of 4- to 6-year-old children (n=64) sorted toy pictures into self- and other-owned sets. A surprise recognition memory test revealed a significant advantage for toys owned by self, which decreased with age. Neither verbal ability nor theory of mind attainment predicted the size of the memory advantage for self-owned items. This finding suggests that contrary to some previous reports, memory in early childhood can be shaped by the same self-referential biases that pervade adult cognition.

Association between early attention-deficit/hyperactivity symptoms and current verbal and visuo-spatial short-term memory

Deficits in short-term memory are common in adolescents with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), but their current ADHD symptoms cannot well predict their short-term performance. Taking a developmental perspective, we wanted to clarify the association between ADHD symptoms at early childhood and short-term memory in late childhood and adolescence. The participants included 401 patients with a clinical diagnosis of DSM-IV ADHD, 213 siblings, and 176 unaffected controls aged 8-17 years (mean age, 12.02 ± 2.24). All participants and their mothers were interviewed using the Chinese Kiddie Epidemiologic version of the Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia to obtain information about ADHD symptoms and other psychiatric disorders retrospectively, at an earlier age first, then currently. The participants were assessed with the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children--3rd edition, including Digit Span, and the Spatial working memory task of the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery. Multi-level regression models were used for data analysis. Although crude analyses revealed that inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity symptoms significantly predicted deficits in short-term memory, only inattention symptoms had significant effects (all p<0.001) in a model that included all three ADHD symptoms. After further controlling for comorbidity, age of assessment, treatment with methylphenidate, and Full-scale IQ, the severity of childhood inattention symptoms was still significantly associated with worse verbal (p = 0.008) and spatial (p ranging from 0.017 to 0.002) short-term memory at the current assessment. Therefore, our findings suggest that earlier inattention symptoms are associated with impaired verbal and visuo-spatial short-term memory at a later development stage. Impaired short-term memory in adolescence can be detected earlier by screening for the severity of inattention in childhood.

“Family Stories” and Their Implications for Preschoolers’ Memories of Personal Events

Most adults experience childhood amnesia: They have very few memories of events prior to 3 to 4 years of age. Nevertheless, some early memories are retained. Multiple factors likely are responsible for the survival of early childhood memories, including external representations such as videos, photographs, and conversations about past experiences, which help sustain memories over time. The present research was an experimental test of whether repeated recounting of past events influences young children's recall during a year delay. Twenty-four mothers and their 4-year-old children talked repeatedly about two randomly selected personal events that were assigned to become family-story events. Mothers were asked not to initiate conversations about two other randomly selected events (control events). A year later, children were interviewed by an experimenter about all four events. In free recall, children retrieved more of the family-story than the control events. With the aid of Wh- questions, levels of retrieval no longer differed. Moreover, the completeness and organization of children's narratives did not depend on whether they were about family-story or control events. The pattern of results suggests that repeated conversations about a past event help to maintain accessibility of the memory but may not substantially impact the integrity of the memory trace itself. The role of family stories in children's social and autobiographical memory development is discussed.

Warm-up questions on early childhood memories affect the reported age of earliest memories in late adolescence

Researchers have recently used warm-up questions concerning childhood memories at specific early ages (e.g. 3 years of age) in an attempt to facilitate the retrieval process on the subsequent question regarding the earliest memory. Although this methodology may indeed facilitate the retrieval process by conducting the test in a manner resembling ordinary dialogue, the methodology might also unintentionally put further demand characteristics on the respondents. In the present study we systematically manipulated the target age (either 3 or 6 years of age) for the warm-up question preceding the ‘earliest memory’ question in order to test this possibility. The participants were 445 Danish high school students (M age=17.94). The results revealed that systematically manipulating the target age for the warm-up question had a strong impact on the age of the earliest memory reported by the adolescents. Participants who received warm-up questions with 3 years as the target age subsequently reported earlier first memories than the participants receiving warm-up questions with 6 years as the target age. These results have important implications for the methodology involved in research on childhood amnesia.

Latent constructs of the Autobiographical Memory Questionnaire: A recollection-belief model of autobiographical experience

Many researchers employ single-item scales of subjective experiences such as imagery and confidence to assess autobiographical memory. We tested the hypothesis that four latent constructs, recollection, belief, impact, and rehearsal, account for the variance in commonly used scales across four different types of autobiographical memory: earliest childhood memory, cue word memory of personal experience, highly vivid memory, and most stressful memory. Participants rated each memory on scales hypothesised to be indicators of one of four latent constructs. Multi-group confirmatory factor analyses and structural analyses confirmed the similarity of the latent constructs of recollection, belief, impact, and rehearsal, as well as the similarity of the structural relationships among those constructs across memory type. The observed pattern of mean differences between the varieties of autobiographical experiences was consistent with prior research and theory in the study of autobiographical memory.

Infantile amnesia: A neurogenic hypothesis

In the late 19th Century, Sigmund Freud described the phenomenon in which people are unable to recall events from early childhood as infantile amnesia. Although universally observed, infantile amnesia is a paradox; adults have surprisingly few memories of early childhood despite the seemingly exuberant learning capacity of young children. How can these findings be reconciled? The mechanisms underlying this form of amnesia are the subject of much debate. Psychological/cognitive theories assert that the ability to maintain detailed, declarative-like memories in the long term correlates with the development of language, theory of mind, and/or sense of "self." However, the finding that experimental animals also show infantile amnesia suggests that this phenomenon cannot be explained fully in purely human terms. Biological explanations of infantile amnesia suggest that protracted postnatal development of key brain regions important for memory interferes with stable long-term memory storage, yet they do not clearly specify which particular aspects of brain maturation are causally related to infantile amnesia. Here, we propose a hypothesis of infantile amnesia that focuses on one specific aspect of postnatal brain development--the continued addition of new neurons to the hippocampus. Infants (humans, nonhuman primates, and rodents) exhibit high levels of hippocampal neurogenesis and an inability to form lasting memories. Interestingly, the decline of postnatal neurogenesis levels corresponds to the emergence of the ability to form stable long-term memory. We propose that high neurogenesis levels negatively regulate the ability to form enduring memories, most likely by replacing synaptic connections in preexisting hippocampal memory circuits.

In living memory: Mapping the landscape of Greenham and Crookham Commons

Greenham and Crookham Commons in West Berkshire, UK, are geographic places identifiable on satellite images and survey maps. This article complicates simple physical mappings of the Commons by analysing the mental maps that emerge from the recorded memories of 12 elderly participants engaged in a ‘reminiscence project’. Originally part of a community sound installation, the recordings provide insights into lives lived in and around the Commons from the early 20th century to the present day. Following a chronological structure linked to the geographical features of the Commons, the article examines myths and stories associated with these shared spaces as they were transformed by time, history and ageing. Early childhood memories of the landscape of the Commons create a virtual cartography that brings to the fore experiences of daily life and practices of space belonging to earlier generations. These memories are set in stark contrast to the memories of the US army occupation of the Commons, and of the anti-nuclear protests that made them famous. Considering these virtual cartographies enables reflections on the relationship between memory, space and landscape over time as well as on the unique ways in which old age may alter conceptions of space in shared reminiscences.

Predictors of Adult Narrative Elaboration: Emotion, Attachment, and Gender

When individuals first converse with others, they bring to those interactions expectations and habits of communication that are affected by many factors. In this study we looked at several factors simultaneously to see which predicted narrative elaboration in personal memories of early childhood and adolescence: self-described attachment patterns, stress of original experiences, and gender. A sample of 195 undergraduates aged 18–29 recalled their very earliest memory and their earliest memory of adolescence (in counterbalanced order) and completed the Multi-Item Measure of Romantic Attachment (Brennan, Clark, &amp; Shaver, 1998). Positive experiences dominated both early and adolescent memories, though there were significant positive correlations between ratings of negativity (stress) and several measures of narrative elaboration in both kinds of memories. Avoidance scales correlated negatively with many measures of elaboration, while anxiety scales correlated positively only with one submeasure. In regression analyses of narrative elaboration conducted separately for early and late memories, the following significant patterns were observed: (1) females elaborated more than males; (2) more negative memories predicted more elaboration but only in early memories; and (3) avoidance scores predicted less elaboration, while anxiety scales were not significant predictors. Results are discussed in terms of the consequences of these issues for dating.