Developmental Changes in Item and Source Memory: Evidence From an ERP Recognition Memory Study With Children, Adolescents, and Adults

Abstract

Event-related potential (ERP) correlates of item and source memory were assessed in 18 children (7-8 years), 20 adolescents (13-14 years), and 20 adults (20-29 years) performing a continuous recognition memory task with object and nonobject stimuli. Memory performance increased with age and was particularly low for source memory in children. The ERP difference between first presentations of objects and nonobjects, reflecting generic novelty processing, showed only small developmental changes. Regarding item memory, adults showed the putative ERP correlates of familiarity and recollection, whereas ERP effects in children and adolescents suggested a strong reliance on recollection. ERP correlates of source memory refined with age, suggesting maturation of strategic recollection between childhood and adolescence and the development of postretrieval control until adulthood.

Electrophysiological Investigation of Source Memory in Early Childhood

“…Subsequent investigations by this group have replicated this finding using a continuous recognition memory paradigm (Sprondel et al, 2011). The authors suggest that the finding of reliance on recollection is driven in part by the nature of the task, which requires retrieval of highly familiar items after relatively short delays (Sprondel et al, 2011).…”

“…Evidence supporting this developmental profile and these brain–behavior relations comes from a variety of different sources. In adults and school-aged children, converging work stems from behavioral (Ghetti & Angelini, 2008), electrophysiological (event-related potential [ERP], Cycowicz, Friedman, & Duff, 2003; Czernochowski, Mecklinger, Johansson, & Brinkmann, 2005; Mecklinger, Brunnemann, & Kipp, 2011; Sprondel, Kipp, & Mecklinger, 2011), and neuroimaging (functional magnetic resonance imaging [fMRI], Ghetti et al, 2010; Menon et al, 2005; Ofen et al, 2007) paradigms. Research in infancy and early childhood has relied more exclusively on behavioral (Bauer, 2006) and electrophysiological (de Haan, 2007; DeBoer, Scott, & Nelson, 2005; 2007) paradigms (although some neuropsychological work with populations at-risk for memory or hippocampal impairment has been done (e.g., Adlam, Vargha-Khadem, Mishkin, & de Haan, 2005; Rose, Feldman, Jankowski, & Van Rossem, 2011; Riggins, Miller, Bauer, Georgeiff, & Nelson, 2009a).…”

An ERP study of recognition memory for concrete and abstract pictures in school-aged children

“…Some studies have failed to observe the classical FN400 repetition effect in children (Czernochowski et al, 2005; Friedman et al, 2010; Sprondel et al, 2011), but others have also reported clear FN400 and P600 repetition effects (Congdon et al, 2012; Mecklinger et al, 2011; Van Strien et al, 2011). Larger sample size, shorter repetition lags, and pressure to respond quickly are characteristics that might have allowed the observation of FN400 repetition effects in children in the latter studies.…”

When and how do children develop knowledge of verb argument structure? Evidence from verb bias effects in a structural priming task

“…According to this account, the target verb is a cue in the retrieval of an explicit memory of the prime verb and structure; this can explain why adults do not always show lexical boost effects in priming paradigms that reduce the time for explicit processing (e.g., RSVP; Tooley & Bock, 2014). Given that explicit memory increases with age (Naito, 1990;Sprondel, Kipp, & Mecklinger, 2011), the boost is predicted to increase in line with the ability to form, store, and retrieve explicit memories. In other words, the model predicts that structural priming, verb bias and prime surprisal effects, but not the lexical boost, will be present from the age of three years.…”