The ontogeny of relational memory and pattern separation

Abstract

Episodic memory relies on memory for the relations among multiple elements of an event and the ability to discriminate among similar elements of episodes. The latter phenomenon, termed pattern separation, has been studied mainly in young and older adults with relatively little research on children. Building on prior work with young children, we created an engaging computer-administered relational memory task assessing what-where relations. We also modified the Mnemonic Similarity Task used to assess pattern discrimination in young and older adults for use with preschool children. Results showed that 4 year-olds performed significantly worse than 6 year-olds and adults on both tasks, whereas 6 year-olds and adults performed comparably, even though there were no ceiling effects. However, performance on the two tasks did not correlate, suggesting that two distinct mnemonic processes with different developmental trajectories may contribute to age-related changes in episodic memory.

Differential development of relational memory and pattern separation

“…Recent work (Ngo et al, ) has investigated relational memory and pattern separation in 4‐ and 6‐year‐old children and young adults and found no significant differences in lure discrimination or relational accuracy between 6‐year‐olds and young adults—a pattern of findings that is not entirely consistent with the results presented here. Because Ngo et al employed a slightly different metric of lure discrimination (Toner, Pirogovsky, Kirwan, & Gilbert, ) to the one employed here (Stark et al, ), we recalculated our metric using the same subtraction they utilized and found the same result they report with respect to pattern separation—that children's performance was not significantly different from young adults'.…”

“…Following up on previously reported findings (Ngo et al, ), we examined associations between MST outcomes (recognition and lure discrimination) and spatial reconstruction metrics (global misplacement and accurate object‐location binding). We first conducted bivariate correlations between these measures separately within children ( n = 36) and adults ( n = 40).…”

“…Our secondary analyses explored the relationship between MST performance and relational memory measures (assessed via the spatial reconstruction task), following up on previous work (Ngo et al, ), which did not find significant associations between lure discrimination and relational memory performance. Contrary to these previous findings, we found a pattern of associations between both MST performance measures and measures of relational memory, in both children and adults.…”

“…In the case of the spatial reconstruction task, separate independent‐samples t‐ tests were conducted to evaluate group differences for the misplacement and accurate creature‐location binding. Following up on previous work (Ngo et al, ), our secondary analyses explored relationships between MST metrics and spatial reconstruction measures, via bivariate correlations (Pearson's r ) within each age group and followed these up with partial correlations in the entire sample, controlling for age.…”

Empirical Evidence Supporting Neural Contributions to Episodic Memory Development in Early Childhood: Implications for Childhood Amnesia

“…Research has documented similar age‐related improvements in memory for details across early childhood using a variety of other paradigms, including memory for pairs of items or words (e.g., Yim, Dennis, & Sloutsky, ), the source of novel facts (e.g., Drummey & Newcombe, ; Riggins, ), and the spatial location in which an item was originally encountered (e.g., Bauer et al, ). Closely related research suggests that early childhood is a time when children’s ability to form very detailed memories and discriminate between them also improves (Canada, Ngo, Newcombe, Geng, & Riggins, ; Ngo, Newcombe, & Olson, ). Taken together, findings from laboratory‐based paradigms support the suggestion that an important transition in children’s ability to form and recall detailed memories occurs during early childhood.…”