Memory Development from Early Childhood Through Emerging Adulthood

Wolfgang Schneider

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Memory Development from Early Childhood Through Emerging Adulthood

Wolfgang SchneiderDepartment of Psychology University of Würzburg Würzburg Germany

Springer Cham Heidelberg New York Dordrecht London

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ISBN 978-3-319-09610-0 ISBN 978-3-319-09611-7 (eBook)DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-09611-7

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This book is dedicated to the memory of Michael Pressley, Thomas O. Nelson, and Franz E.Weinert

Supported by a grant from Volkswagen Foundation and Thyssen Foundation

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It took a long time for me to write this book, and there were times when I thought it would never happen. My good friend and colleague Michael Pressley and I first published a volume on memory development between two and twenty in 1989, followed by a second edition in 1997. In the preface to the latter volume, we announced a third edition within the next years. This did not happen for two reasons. First, both of us were busy with different issues during the time we had scheduled for an update of our memory book, and we found it difficult to refocus our efforts on aspects of memory development. Second and, much more impor-tant, Mike became seriously ill during this time and passed away much too early in 2006. This tragic and unexpected event not only shocked me but also forced me to postpone the plan to write another book on memory development.

It took another 5 years before I saw a chance to reactivate this plan. At that time, Volkwagen Foundation and Thyssen Foundation offered grants for Opus Magnum writings, that is, comprehensive books on important themes in the humanities and social sciences. I realized that this could be a nice opportunity to write a book on memory development, and submitted a proposal. I was delighted to learn a few months later that my proposal was accepted, and that I was awarded the Opus Magnum grant by the two foundations. This grant freed me of teaching and administrative duties for a year and definitively facilitated writing a new book on memory development. I am indebted to Volkswagen Foundation and Thyssen Foundation for this generous support.

If I see it correctly, this is my last book on memory development. It completes a process started in the mid-1970s when my academic mentor and teacher Franz Weinert hired me as a research assistant. My first job was to come up with a list of publications on memory development written between the mid-1960s and mid-1970s. Although the resulting list was brief, it contained a number of studies that I found remarkable. I am very grateful to Franz Weinert for not only stimulating my interest in the topic but also for providing continuous support during the fol-lowing decades. Another turning point was meeting John Flavell at a conference in Heidelberg organized by Franz Weinert. I was fortunate to receive a grant from Volkswagen Foundation and to spend an academic year with John at Stanford

Preface

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University in the early 1980s. John has influenced my thinking on the develop-ment of memory and metamemory enormeously, challenging me to think about memory differently than I would have otherwise. It was during this time that I met Michael Pressley and John Borkowski who stimulated my thinking and research on memory development for a long time.

Many other people deserve thanks for their contributions to my previous work and the writing of this book. My ideas about the development of memory and metacognition as well as about the memory-metamemory relationships have been expanded by discussions with my good friends and colleagues Patricia Bauer, Harry Bahrick, David Bjorklund, Stephen Ceci, Marcus Hasselhorn, Robert Kail, Asher Koriat, Joachim Körkel, Beth Kurtz-Costes, Ulman Lindenberger, Thomas Nelson, Peter Ornstein, Mitchell Rabinowitz, Elaine Reese, Claudia Roebers, Harriet Salatas-Waters, Robert Siegler, and Beate Sodian. I am particularly grate-ful to Elaine, Dave, Rob, and Peter for reading drafts of the manuscript and com-menting on my chapters.

Given that I am not a native speaker of English, I benefited enormously from Jane Zagorski’s thorough editing of the book chapters and her didactic qualities. I learned a lot about the subtleties of English by her thoughtful examples show-ing that several of my formally correct expressions did not sound right to a native speaker. My thanks also go to my coworker Michaela Pirkner who spent many hours with formally editing the manuscript and carefully checking the reference list. Last but not least I am very grateful to my wife Elisabeth for her never end-ing support, feedback, and encouragement throughout this project. I doubt that I would not have been able to finish it without her consistent help.

I dedicate this book to the memory of Michael Pressley, Thomas O. Nelson, and Franz E. Weinert, three outstanding scientists who contributed considerably to the development of my knowledge about memory and metacognition, and who passed away much too early. While they will be unable to read and comment on the book, I hope that the readers of this volume find it useful for their purposes. This book is intended for a number of audiences. It is meant as a coherent over-view of recent trends in research on memory development for advanced under-graduate and graduate students, as well as for professionals. It is also a volume for my peers in that I try to provide clear stances on many of the major issues of the day. I hope that I wrote a book that summarizes the field well in a fashion that is interesting. Let me know what you think.

Wolfgang Schneider

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Contents

1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1Organization of This Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

2 A Brief History of Memory Development Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91880–1935 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Evidence from Child Psychology Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10Findings from Early Experimental Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11Children’s Eyewitness Memory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14Assessment of “General” Memory Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

1936–1965 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17German Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17American Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17Russian Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

Transition to the Modern Era . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

3 The Development of Implicit Memory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25Development of Perceptual Priming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26The Development of Conceptual Priming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30Interactions Between Implicit and Explicit Memory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32Implicit Memory in Clinical Populations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33The Impact of Advances in Neuroscience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

4 Memory Development During the Infant and Toddler Years . . . . . . . 39A Short History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39Short-Term/Working Memory in Infancy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42Memory Tasks Used with Preverbal Infants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

Hide-and-Seek Tasks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43Novelty-Preference Paradigms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

Contentsx

The Development of Long-Term Memory in Infants and Toddlers . . . . . 54Conditioning Paradigms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54Deferred Imitation Tasks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57Does the Age of 9 Months Indicate an Important Transition Period? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59Effects of Memory Reinstatement and Reactivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61The Impact of Language Acquisition on Toddlers’ LTM . . . . . . . . . . 63Determinants of Young Children’s Long-Term Recall . . . . . . . . . . . . 65Kinds of Memory: Implicit and Explicit Memory in Infancy . . . . . . 67Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72

5 The Development of Event and Autobiographical Memory in Childhood and Adolescence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75Memory for Routine Events (Script-Based Memory) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

Developmental Differences in Event Recall . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79Developmental Differences in Event Recall Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80

Memories for Single Instances of Routine Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82Memory for Fixed and Variable Items . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83The Schema-Confirmation-Deployment Model as an Explanatory Approach. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84The Importance of Memory Cues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86

Memories of Novel and Salient Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87Memory of Novel Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87Memory for Salient Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88Effects of Experience and Prior Knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90

Social–Cultural Contexts of Event Memories: Effects of Maternal Reminiscing Style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91

Conversations About Past Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91Conversations During Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95Relevance of Social–Cultural Context: Reminiscing and Socioemotional Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97How Long Do Autobiographical Memories Last? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

Infantile Amnesia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101Empirical Findings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102Explanations of Infantile Amnesia and Their Evaluation . . . . . . . . . 103

Eyewitness Memory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108How Long Do Eyewitness Memories Last? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111The Role of Metacognitive and Background Knowledge . . . . . . . . . 113Importance of the Salience of Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115Age Differences in Suggestibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116Source Memory Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120Developmental Trends in False Memory Creation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121Familiarity and Recollection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125

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Facilitating Young Children’s Performance in Eyewitness Situations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128

6 The Role of Basic Memory Capacities and Working Memory . . . . . . 131The Development of Short-Term Memory Capacity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133

The Impact of Strategic Variables on Memory Span Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136The Impact of Item-Ordering Ability on Memory Span Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138

Information Processing Speed and Short-Term Memory Capacity . . . . . 139Developmental Changes in Information Processing Speed . . . . . . . . 139Relations Between Information Processing Speed and Memory Span . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141

Capacity, Working Memory, and Cognitive Development: Theoretical Approaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144

Neo-Piagetian Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145Information Processing and Working Memory Models . . . . . . . . . . . 148

Empirical Tests of the Various Theoretical Working Memory Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154

Empirical Tests of Pascual-Leone’s Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154Tests of Case’s Resource-Sharing Model or Working Memory and its Competitors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157Empirical Tests of the Baddeley’s Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160Neuropsychological Evidence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171Evidence of the Episodic Buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175Evaluation of Cowan’s Working Memory Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176

Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180

7 The Development of Encoding and Retrieval Strategies . . . . . . . . . . . 183Evidence of Strategic Behavior in Young Children . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186

Evidence of Early Retrieval Strategies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186Evidence of Early Encoding Strategies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189What Develops Earlier: Encoding or Retrieval Strategies? . . . . . . . . 190

Encoding Strategies During the Elementary and Middle-School Years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193

Rehearsal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193Organizational Strategies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197Elaboration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204Strategies for Remembering Complex Materials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210

Retrieval Strategies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212Developmental Trends in the Use of External and Internal Retrieval Cues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212

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Age Differences in the Flexibility of Retrieval Strategies . . . . . . . . . 214Multiple and Variable Strategy Use . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216

Factors Affecting Children’s Strategy Use and Development . . . . . . 218Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229

8 Effects of the Knowledge Base on Memory Development . . . . . . . . . . 231Conceptualizations of Knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231Effects of the Knowledge Base on Memory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234

Item-Specific Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234Effortless Activation of Semantic Memory Relations . . . . . . . . . . . . 236The Knowledge Base and Strategy Use . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237

Evidence That World Knowledge Mediates Memory and Learning . . . . . 238Evidence for the Limited Effects of Domain Knowledge on Subsequent Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240

Interrelations Between the Knowledge Base and Strategies . . . . . . . 241Evidence for Strong Effects of the Knowledge Base on Subsequent Learning and Memory: The Case of Expertise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246Intelligence, Knowledge, and Memory Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252

9 The Development of Metamemory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255Conceptualizations of Metacognitive Knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256

Children’s “Theory of Mind” and Metacognitive Knowledge . . . . . . 260Assessment of Metamemory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262

Measures of Declarative Metamemory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262Measurement Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263Measures of Procedural Metamemory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264Measurement Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266

The Development of Metamemory in Children and Adolescents . . . . . . . 268Precursors of Metamemory: Knowledge of “Mental Verbs” and the Acquisition of a “Theory of Mind” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268Development of Declarative Metamemory from Early Childhood to Adolescence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269The Development of Monitoring and Self-Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275Ease-of-Learning (EOL) Judgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276Learning (JOLs) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278Knowing (FOK) Judgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281Retrieval Monitoring: The Case of Confidence Judgments (CJs) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283The Relation Between Monitoring and Control Processes in Children and Adolescents. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285

Metamemory–Memory Relations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294Evidence from Correlational Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295Evidence from Training Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 298Evidence from Multivariate Analyses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299

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The Importance of Metacognition for Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 302Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307

10 Conclusions and Future Directions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309Development of Implicit Memory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 310Infancy and Early Childhood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311Event Memory and Autobiographical Memory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313Development of Memory Capacity and Working Memory . . . . . . . . . . . . 315Development of Memory Strategies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316The Impact of the Knowledge Base on Memory Development . . . . . . . . 318The Development of Metamemory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319Future Directions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 320

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 327

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 381