By-passing strategic retrieval: Experimentally induced spontaneous episodic memories in 35- and 46-month-old children

Abstract

Most parents have experienced their preschool child having spontaneous episodic memories, that is, verbally reported memories of past events that come to the child almost out of the blue. Until recently such memories had only been observed outside the lab. By means of a new paradigm we report experimentally induced spontaneous memories of a unique event experienced one week earlier in 35- and 46-month-old children (N=110). At the first visit, half of the children experienced a Teddy event and the other half experienced a Game event. At the second visit the children's spontaneous utterances were recorded while waiting. The results revealed that the children talked spontaneously about the unique event experienced previously. Age showed no systematic effect on spontaneous episodic recollection, but there was a clear effect of age on subsequent control questions requiring strategic retrieval. The results support the idea of involuntary episodic remembering being a developmentally early achievement.

Thirty-five-month-old children have spontaneous memories despite change of context for retrieval

“…While the recent study by Krøjgaard et al (2017) showed that spontaneous recall can indeed be induced in young children, we do not know exactly what type of cues made the children spontaneously remember the target event. The experimental set-up used in Krøjgaard et al (2017) allows us to investigate this more thoroughly. In the present study, we therefore focus on the possible impact of contextual cues (i.e., manipulating whether or not the children return to the same room).…”

“…Recently, a novel experimental procedure provided evidence that spontaneous memories can be induced in young children under controlled conditions (Krøjgaard, Kingo, Dahl, & Berntsen, 2014) -even for unique events (Krøjgaard, Kingo, Jensen, & Berntsen, 2017). The development of this novel experimental paradigm provides a unique opportunity for investigating spontaneous memories in children more closely.…”

“…The development of this novel experimental paradigm provides a unique opportunity for investigating spontaneous memories in children more closely. As the present study makes use of the same design as the one used in the most recent version of this paradigm (Krøjgaard et al, 2017), it is outlined here in some detail: A group of 35-and 46-month olds visited the lab twice separated by one week. At the first visit, the children were presented with one of two highly unique and entertaining events: either a Teddy event, involving two mechanical teddies capable of singing and wiggling with their ears, or the Game event, in which the children were invited to try two different types of throwing games for which they always won medals.…”

“…Compared to an equivalent baseline measure obtained at the first visit prior to being presented with the given event, the children spontaneously talked about the event they had seen at the first visit, while they never talked about the event they had not seen when returning to the lab at the second visit (Krøjgaard et al, 2017).The 35-month-olds performed poorly relative to their 46-month-old peers, when asked control questions requiring strategic recall at the very end of the second visit, whereas age had little effect on the children's spontaneous recall.…”

Spontaneous future cognition: the past, present and future of an emerging topic

“…Taken together, findings from Caza and Atance and McCormack et al replicate and extend the results of studies on spontaneous episodic memories in young children, which also show small or no age effects and suggest that both past and future spontaneous thoughts may be a precursor of more deliberate forms of mental time travel in everyday life (cf. Krøjgaard, Kingo, Jensen, & Berntsen, 2017). It is obvious that future research should investigate in more detail similarities and differences between the developmental trajectories of deliberate and spontaneous future thinking while, at the same time, comparing it to the deliberate and spontaneous recall of past events.…”