Age trends in children’s memory for semantically-related word lists

• In Event: Attention and memory in infants and children

Abstract

For the past decade, there has been confusion regarding the course of memory development in children. Researchers have debated the existence of normative and reverse developmental trends regarding children’s suggestibility. The former emphasizes younger children’s greater suggestibility, inaccurate reporting, and increased false memory, while the latter emphasizes young children’s lesser suggestibility, more accurate reporting, and decreased false memory. Theoretically, older children are more prone to suggestions and false memories because they rely on connected-meaning sequences and schemas during recall. The present study examined age-related changes in memory recall for semantically-related word lists. Previous research shows recall steadily decreases with each word list due to the build-up of proactive inhibition (e.g., O’Neill et al., 1978). However, we examined whether a change in the semantic meaning of words on the fourth list would release built-up proactive inhibition and revert recall to the level of recall for the first list. Participants were 100 children aged 3- to 12-years old (M = 7.88, SD = 3.90) recruited in a midsized Midwestern city. Children listened to four word lists containing the names of four semantically-related animals. The first three word lists contained the names of wild animals (e.g., zebra, giraffe, elephant) and the fourth list contained the names of domestic animals (e.g., dog, cat, hamster). Immediately after listening to each word list, children were instructed to list five or more items (e.g., colors, shapes, fruits) for 15-seconds to prevent rehearsal of the word list. The order in which children listened to the first three word lists was randomized to prevent order effects, but all children heard the list of domestic animals on the final trial. A distractor task was created to prevent children’s rehearsal of the word lists. See Table 1 for the four word lists and their associated distractor task. Children received one point for each word correctly recalled from each list, for a maximum of four points per list. A series of mixed model and univariate ANOVAs were conducted using age group (3-5, 6-9, and 10-12) as a between-subjects variable. First, we found a significant effect of age group on children’s accurate recall across all trials, F(2, 97) = 67.43 , p < .001, η2 = .58. Children ages 10-12 years had superior recall across the four trials. When we examined the difference in recall between the third and fourth trials, we found a significant effect of age group as well, F(2, 97) = 12.16 , p = .002, η2 = .12. As predicted, the release of built-up proactive inhibition was demonstrated by the two older groups. Although the youngest children performed poorly across all trials, the two older groups decreased in accuracy from trials 1-3 and demonstrated an increase in accuracy on the final trial. These results challenge the frequent claim that false memory illusions stem from semantic knowledge networks, such as in the DRM paradigm. We argue older children’s knowledge structures do play an important role in recall can and at times can result in better, not worse, memory performance.

Authors

• Christina Oksana Perez, University of Toledo
  Presenting Author

• Kelsey Warniment, University of Toledo
  Non-Presenting Author

• Alana Barclay, University of Toledo
  Non-Presenting Author

• Stephen J Ceci, Cornell University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kamala London, University of Toledo
  Non-Presenting Author