Developmental differences in episodic memory across school ages: evidence from enacted events performed by self and others

Abstract

Developmental differences in episodic memory across school ages: Evidence from enacted events performed by self and others. The aim of this study was to examine action memory as a form of episodic memory among school-aged subjects. Most research on action memory has focused on memory changes in adult populations. This study explored the action memory of children over time. A total of 410 schoolaged child participants, comprising 201 girls and 208 boys in four age groups (8, 10, 12, and 14), were included in this study. We studied two forms of action encoding, subject-performed tasks (SPTs) and experimenter-performed tasks (EPTs), which were compared with one verbal encoding task (VT) as a control condition. At retrieval, we used three memory tests (free recall, cued recall, and recognition). We observed significant differences in memory performance in children aged 8 to 14 years with respect to free recall and cued recall but not recognition. The largest memory enhancement was observed for the SPTs in the 8-to 14-year-old participants under all test conditions. Participants performed equally well on the free recall of SPTs and EPTs, whereas they displayed better performances on the cued recall and recognition of SPTs compared to EPTs. The strategic nature of SPTs and the distinction between item-specific information and relational information are discussed.

Hey Teacher, Don’t Leave Them Kids Alone: Action Is Better for Memory than Reading

“…Our results showed also that children, whatever their age, exhibited higher recall performance when they had to perform the actions indicated in the sentences than when they have to listen. They also indicate that EE is observed in the subject-performed condition (differences between Perform and Read) and, inconsistently with Badinlou et al’s (2015) results, in the experimenter-performed condition (differences between Watch and Read) This might be due to our sample size or the cued recall methodology, for which we only ask for items participants did not recalled freely, contrary to Badinlou et al (2015) who asked participants to recall every item during cued recall, including those recalled during free recall. With Badinlou et al’s (2015) methodology, participants with correct answers on free recall could fail to give the correct answer during cued recall, whereas this is not possible with our methodology.…”

“…Describing the encoding conditions that are the most appropriate during childhood is in fact essential, especially as large age-related differences in episodic memory abilities have been observed during childhood and adolescence (e.g., Picard et al, 2017). Globally, performing action has been found to improve memory, in normal children (Blake et al, 1987; Ratner and Hill, 1991; James and Swain, 2011; Badinlou et al, 2015), in children with learning disabilities (Freides and Messina, 1986), in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (Yang et al, 2017) or in developmental pathologies, such as autism (for a review, see Grainger et al, 2014). Memorization of sentences seems in fact facilitated when children perform gestures which are coherent with the meaning of sentences in comparison to verbal learning, that is learning by reading or listening an action sentence.…”

“…Thus, in agreement with the multimodal theory, some studies observed an advantage of SPTs over EPT in children (e.g., Baker-Ward et al, 1990), whereas others reveal the opposite pattern (Ratner and Hill, 1991) or comparable performance (e.g., Foley and Johnson, 1985). In order to go over the methodological gap of previous studies, an EE paradigm has been recently proposed to children from 8 to 14 years, using the three most common encoding conditions: VT, EPT, and SPT (i.e., Read, Watch, and Perform; Badinlou et al, 2015) and three retrieval phases: free recall, cued recall, and then recognition tests. This research revealed several differences between SPTs and EPTs in their school-aged participants.…”

The Anatomy of Working Memory and Its Utility in Criminal Investigations

“…However, there are also applications for the temporary storage and manipulation of information. The theoretical framework of episodic memory is structurally oriented to the past and is the only memory system which allows us to consciously re-experience past events (Tulving, 2002) [9]; it can be studied as either a verbalor enacted event, with separate phases corresponding to encoding and retrieval (Badinlou, KormiNouri, Nasab, & Knopf, 2017) [10]. The right prefrontal cortex is preferentially activated during episodic retrieval (Loeb & Poggio, 2002) [3].…”

A study of retrieval processes in action memory for school-aged children: the impact of recall period and difficulty on action memory

“…It is also assumed that during free recall, both relational and item-specific information processing are important (e.g. Badinlou, Kormi-Nouri, Mousavi Nasab, & Knopf, 2017;Engelkamp & Dehn, 2000;Steffens, 2007). Relational processing enhances accessibility and association between items by providing an effective search strategy during retrieval (namely the similarities between the items), whereas item-specific processing facilitates retention by enhancing the discriminability of the items (Burns & Hebert, 2005;Perlmutter & Lange, 2014;Steffens et al, 2009;Steffens, Jelenec, Mecklenbräuker, & Thompson, 2006).…”