Contrasting Memory for Temporal-Source and Memory for Content in Children's Discrimination of Repeated Events

Abstract

The current studies examined the separate roles that memory of temporal‐source and memory of content play in children's discrimination of occurrences of a repeated event. The studies were also designed to determine the impact of age and retention interval on each of these components. In Experiment One, 4‐ to 5‐ versus 6‐ to 8‐year‐old children experienced six occurrences of a repeated event; each occurrence had the same underlying structure; however, a different version or instantiation of each item was included in each occurrence of the event. At either 1 or 6 week delay, the children were asked to recall which instantiation of the item was included in the final occurrence. In Experiment Two, children were required to recall as many instantiations as they could, prior to making a decision about which instantiation was included in the final occurrence. The results indicated that: (a) children's capacity to correctly identify the final instantiation declined over time and increased with age; (b) children's capacity to provide an instantiation that was temporally close to the final occurrence declined over time and increased with age; and (c) children's ability to remember the source of an instantiation decreased over time irrespective of any loss of memory for content. The results were discussed in relation to current theories of memory and children's eyewitness memory. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Investigating the effect of emotional stress on adult memory for single and repeated events.

“…The findings in the current study appear to indicate that regardless of whether an event was stressful or not stressful, repeated-event participants were less capable of particularizing (i.e., fewer correct details—defined narrowly, more internal intrusion errors) the target scenario compared to the single-event participants. These findings are consistent with, and extend, previous research in both children and adults, showing that recalling information from one specific instance of highly similar events is difficult (e.g., Connolly & Lindsay, 2001; Connolly & Price, 2006; Powell & Thomson, 1996, 1997; Theunissen et al, 2017; Woiwod et al, 2019). In particular, the results suggest that after experiencing multiple, similar events participants not only struggle to retrieve accurate details about one instance, but they also appear to merge the details from different instances making it difficult to determine what occurred when (i.e., during which event).…”

“…Until recently, the majority of research on memory for repeated events has been conducted using child samples, while very little has been conducted with adult samples (e.g., Woiwod, Fitzgerald, Sheahan, Price, & Connolly, 2019). In a typical child experiment, memory for a single event is compared to one instance of a repeated event, commonly referred to as the ‘target event’ (e.g., Connolly & Lindsay, 2001; Connolly & Price, 2006; Powell & Thomson, 1996, 1997; Price & Connolly, 2007; Price, Connolly, & Gordon, 2006). In these experiments, children participate in either a single play session or four to six play sessions.…”

Individual measurement of exposure to everyday violence among elementary schoolchildren across various settings

“…Also, distress levels were significantly related both to witnessing and being the victim of violence. Other investigators have shown that by the age of 8 years, children are capable of providing useful information about events they experienced, including recency and frequency of occurrence~Powell & Thomson, 1997;Simons-Morton, Baranowski, Parcel, O'Hara, & Matteson, 1990!. The present study used a Hebrew adaptation of the Violence Exposure Scale-Revised~VEX-R; Fox & Leavitt, 1995!, a cartoon-based scale of exposure to violence requiring respondents to report how often they had either witnessed or been victims of mild and severe violent acts in different settings~home, school, neighborhood!, and how frequently they had seen them on television. The Richters, Martinez, and Valla's 1990!…”

Repeated recall of repeated events: Accuracy and consistency.

“…Additionally, memory for the first instance may be facilitated via involuntary reminding due to repeatedly experiencing similar instances (Hintzman, 2011) and during schema formation (Farrar & Boyer-Pennington, 1999; Farrar & Goodman, 1990). The resulting primacy and recency effects have been widely documented as a pattern of higher proportions of correct details and fewer detail confusions in the recall of the first and final instances of repeated events (Connolly et al, 2016; Dilevski et al, 2020a, 2020b; MacLean et al, 2018; Powell & Thomson, 1997; Powell et al, 2003; Roberts et al, 2015; Rubínová et al, 2020). How do these patterns translate into consistency?…”