Poster #4 - Children’s Attentional States Shape Their Memory More Than Adults’

• In Event: 3-106 - Poster Session 11
  In Poster Session: PS 11 Section - Attention, Learning, Memory

Integrative Statement

Both sustained attention and episodic memory improve radically throughout childhood and adolescence (Betts, Mckay, Maruff, & Anderson, 2006). These cognitive processes are typically studied in isolation, however, a recent study in adults shows that attention can actually predict what we will remember, with attentional lapses impairing memory formation (deBettencourt et al., 2017). Of great importance for understanding the development of episodic memory, attentional lapses occur more frequently in kids than adults (Fortenbaugh et al., 2015). In light of these findings, we explore whether sustained attention impacts memory more in children as compared with adults.

The goals of this study were to 1) characterize developmental differences in sustained attention; 2) probe whether attentional states have a greater influence on memory formation in children than adults. Both children (7-10 years) and young adults (18-21 years) completed a sustained attention task, that involved incidentally encoding trial unique images, while classifying each as ‘living’ (10% of trials) or ‘nonliving’ (90% of trials). After the sustained attention task, memory for each image was tested. We examined the relationship between attention and memory, both within and across individuals. Within participants, we measured how trial-by-trial shifts in attention between good and poor states (characterized by low vs. high response time deviance) influenced online classification accuracy and later memory performance. To examine how individual differences in sustained attention influence performance, we also correlated the percentage of trials that participants spent in a poor attentional state with online classification accuracy and later memory performance.

On average, children spent more time in a poor attentional state than adults (p<0.01) and displayed longer and more frequent attentional lapses (ps< 0.01). This developmental difference in attention fully mediated age-related gains in classification judgements (p<0.01, proportion mediated: 95% CI[0.55, 1.27], p<0.01), suggesting that children who spend more of their time in good attentional states perform at adult levels. We also observed that the relationship between time spent in a poor attentional state and accuracy was stronger for children than adults (p<0.01), suggesting that attentional lapses influence performance to a greater degree in children.

Our findings also revealed that trial-by-trial shifts in attention significantly affected memory in children and adults. In both groups, lapses in attention preceded stimuli that were later forgotten (ps<0.05). Although there were no overall age differences in memory performance, the relationship between attentional shifts and memory formation was stronger in children than adults (p<0.01). These findings show that attentional lapses impair memory formation more in children than adults.

Our study raises the possibility that episodic memory matures earlier than previously thought, and that, when in good attentional states, young children can form memories equally as well as adults. Critically, our findings also signal that children who have difficulty sustaining attention may have disadvantages in memory formation, which may harm academic performance. An optimal strategy for enhancing learning in the classroom may be to simply ensure that kids are engaged and attentive when learning new information.

Authors

• Alexandra Lee Decker, The University of Toronto
  Presenting Author

• Katherine D. Duncan, University of Toronto
  Non-Presenting Author

• Amy S Finn, University of Toronto
  Non-Presenting Author