This study investigated the development of all three components of episodic memory (EM), as defined by Tulving, namely core factual content, spatial context and temporal context. To this end, a novel, ecologically valid test was administered to 109 participants aged 4-16 years.Results showed that each EM component develops at a different rate. Ability to memorize factual content emerges early, whereas context retrieval abilities continue to improve until adolescence, due to persistent encoding difficulties (isolated by comparing results on free recall and recognition tasks). Exploration of links with other cognitive functions revealed that short-term feature-binding abilities contribute to all EM components, and executive functions to temporal and spatial context, although ability to memorize temporal context is predicted mainly by age.Keywords: episodic memory, development, executive functions, working memory, encoding, retrieval, binding.
Developmental Trajectories of the Different Components of Episodic MemoryAlthough the earliest roots of EM can be traced back to around a child's second birthday, major changes in EM skills occur between 2 and 6 years, with substantial development continuing thereafter until adolescence (Newcombe, Lloyd, & Ratliff, 2007).The age-related improvement in memorizing core factual information (e.g., objects, pictures) has been largely documented and observed whatever the nature of the task (free recall: McAuley, Brahmbhatt, & Barch, 2007; cued recall: Melinder, Endestad, & Magnussen, 2006; recognition: Chiu, Schmithorst, Brown, Holland, & Dunn, 2006). Gulya et al. 2002) claim nonetheless that the ability to recall spatial information is particularly complicated for children to acquire and that performances continue to improve beyond 10 years. However, due to the nature of the methodologies that are generally used to assess recall of spatial context in the literature, a note of caution needs to be sounded about its putative developmental trajectory. The characteristics of the spatial contexts used in these studies are relatively far-removed from real life, as they are not particularly distinctive (two squares in a grid are visually very similar), have no actual meaning and are used redundantly (association of one context with several different core factual contents). The few studies to have investigated the ability to recall temporal context also point to the involvement of a process that school-age children apparently find particularly complex (Friedman, 1993(Friedman, , 2005McCormack & Hoerl, 1999).In addition to good spatiotemporal contextual recall abilities, remembering a "true" EM appears to require other skills, namely the long-term binding processes. If we are to take into account the cohesive nature of EM representations, it is therefore necessary to assess the concurrent recall of core factual content and its contextual features, contrary to the many Running head: HOW DOES EPISODIC MEMORY DEVELOP? 5 studies described above (e.g., Cycowicz et al., 2001). Adopting just s...