The Psychometric Properties of the Autobiographical Memory Test in Preschool-Aged Children

Abstract

The Autobiographical Memory Test (AMT) is the most commonly used tool to assess the phenomenon of overgeneral memory. The AMT has mainly been used in adult populations, but its use in preschool children is less common. The need to create an appropriate instrument to study the memory specificity in preschool years led us to develop an AMT version adapted for early childhood. The AMT-Preschool (AMT-P) was administered to a sample of preschool children aged between 3 and 6 (N = 364). The results suggest that the AMT-P functions differently in preschoolers depending on age. With children older than 53 months, results suggest that the AMT-P is appropriate for assessing overgenerality. Nevertheless, with younger children age, the task is more difficult. These results concur with previous research suggesting that the ability to recall specific memories is consolidated from the age of 4½.

Maternal Reminiscing and Autobiographical Memory Features of Mother–Child Dyads in a Cross‐Cultural Context

“…Nonetheless, only child age and language emerged as unique predictors of child memory specificity. This is in line with past research that found the ability to independently recall experiences in young children is dependent on verbal abilities and age (Farrant & Reese, 2000; McDonnell et al, 2016; Nieto, Ros, Mateo, Ricarte, & Latorre, 2017; Reese et al, 2018). In the AMT‐PV, for a memory to be considered as “specific,” children are required to generate a sentence which contains an event that happened on a particular day.…”

Measurement of overgeneral autobiographical memory: Psychometric properties of the autobiographical memory test in young and older populations

“…Regarding the factor structure of the AMT, the results for both samples (young and older) show a one-factor structure comprising positive and negative cue word items. This finding coincides with previous studies in different populations [ 13 , 14 , 16 ], suggesting the AMT measures the unidimensional construct of AM specificity.…”

“…Their results support the existence of a single trait of AM specificity, comprising the combination of positive and negative cue words. This one-factor structure is also confirmed in the studies conducted by Heron et al [ 14 ] in an adolescent population, those by Nuttall et al [ 15 ] and Nieto et al [ 16 ] with preschool-age children, as well as the studies by Griffith et al [ 12 ] in a sample of recent trauma survivors and by Takano et al [ 17 ] with a Japanese community sample.…”

“…In other words, the test is more precise in individuals who score low on memory specificity compared to other participants. By contrast, studies in adolescent population [ 14 ] and preschool population [ 16 ] find that the test is more accurate in individuals with medium memory specificity scores. Griffith et al [ 13 ] state that, in a young population, the AMT is an easy task as their results show that the cue words are more likely to generate a specific memory even in individuals scoring below the mean on memory specificity.…”

“…However, they also suggest there might be circumstances in which cross-study standardization would be undesirable (e.g., if different cue words were found to be differentially related to OGM in different populations). To the best of our knowledge, there are currently no studies validating the AMT in Spanish (except that by Nieto et al [ 16 ], in a preschool population). It is important to conduct this type of validations in different languages/cultures in order to establish a standardized set of cue words adapted to different populations.…”