Decision processes in children's recognition memory

doi:10.1016/0022-0965(73)90069-6

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

Volume 16, Issue 1, August 1973, Pages 148-164

https://doi.org/10.1016/0022-0965(73)90069-6 Get rights and content

Abstract

Kindergarteners and third graders were given a continuous recognition memory task involving two-digit numbers. In addition, a rating scale consisting of photographs of various facial expressions was used to obtain confidence judgments from the Ss. Conventional analyses as well as signal detection analyses of the data revealed the following results: (a) the overall performance of the third graders was superior to that of the kindergarteners; (b) memory strength decreased as the number of intervening items increased; (c) there was no difference in the forgetting rates of the two grade levels; (d) the third graders exhibited a more liberal response bias than the kindergarteners; (e) both the hit rate (probability of correctly labeling an old stimulus as old) and the false-alarm rate (probability of incorrectly labeling a new stimulus as old) increased across blocks of items; (f) the increases in the hit rate and the false-alarm rate over blocks were due to a change in criterion from a relatively conservative level to a more lenient one; (g) the lower the S's level of confidence in judging an item as old, the lower was the probability of that item actually being old; (h) the third graders were better than the kindergarteners at gauging the accuracy of their recognition responses. It was concluded that with respect to recognition memory, chidren as young as $512$ years old are capable, to some extent, of monitoring their own memory states.

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The ability to adaptively shift decision criteria has received considerable interest in the adult literature with researchers examining the limits of when criterion shifts occur and the underlying mechanisms that support this ability (Benjamin, Diaz, & Wee, 2009; Chua & Ahmed, 2016; Dobbins & Han, 2007; Han & Dobbins, 2009; Kantner & Lindsay, 2012). However, previous work has not examined criterion shifting in children (but see Berch & Evans, 1973) and the processes that may support its development. In the current study, we examined criterion shifts by providing participants with reliable probabilistic memory cues that suggested whether or not an item had been previously seen.
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In the adult literature, emotional arousal is regarded as a source of the enhancing effect of emotion on subsequent memory. Here, we used behavioral, electrophysiological, and psychophysiological methods to examine the role of emotional arousal on subsequent memory in school-age children. Five- to 8-year-olds, divided into younger and older groups, viewed emotional scenes as EEG, heart rate, and respiration was recorded, and participated in a memory task 24 hours later where EEG and behavioral responses were recorded; participants provided subjective ratings of the scenes after the memory task. All measures indicated emotion responses in both groups, and in ERP measures the effects were stronger for older children. Emotion responses were more consistent across measures for negative than positive stimuli. Behavioral memory performance was strong but did not differ by emotion condition. Emotion influenced the ERP index of recognition memory in the older group only (enhanced recognition of negative scenes). The findings an increasing interaction of emotion and memory during the school years. Further, the findings impress the value of combining multiple methods to assess emotion and memory in development. Development in the neurophysiology of emotion processing and memory in school-age children.
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Two classes of spatial relations can be distinguished in between and within object representations. Kosslyn [Kosslyn, S. M. (1987). Seeing and imagining in the cerebral hemispheres: A computational approach. Psychological Review, 94, 148–175] suggested that the right hemisphere (RH) is specialized for processing coordinate (metric) spatial information and the left hemisphere (LH) processes categorical (abstract) information more effectively. The present study examined the developmental pattern of spatial relation processing in 6–8-year old, 10–12-year old and adults. Using signal detection analyses we calculated sensitivity and bias scores for all age groups. The results indicated that older children and adults showed a greater response bias than younger children. Also, discrimination sensitivity for spatial relation changes clearly improved with age. For the oldest children (10–12-year old) and adults this improvement was accompanied by a RH specialization. In contrast with Kosslyn's claim, this RH advantage also applied to the processing of categorical spatial information. The results are discussed in terms of a right hemispheric specialization for spatial relation processing which matures with age.
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How do we know that an event did not happen? An intuitively appealing account is that individuals use the perceived memorability of an event, in conjunction with failure to retrieve any information about that event, to infer the event’s nonoccurrence: If an event is expected to be remembered, yet no memory for it can be identified, then the event must not have happened. Evidence consistent with this proposal was obtained in two experiments. Experiment 1 showed that correct rejection was affected by item salience (i.e., memorability), and that item salience interacted with a retrieval manipulation intended to differentially influence correct rejection of high- versus low-salience items. Experiment 2 extended these findings by showing age differences in the effect of salience, consistent with the hypothesis that the strategic use of event memorability may develop with age.
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Younger (6- to 8-year-olds) and older (9- to 11-year-olds) children took a multiple-choice test that yielded comparable performances at the two age levels. When subjects estimated their overall performance at the end of the entire test, older children were more accurate and less variable than younger children. This developmental shift in monitoring of performance could not be explained by the development of estimation skills per se, nor could it be explained by developmental changes in monitoring the correctness of responses to individual items. Younger children were less accurate in judging the correctness of responses to individual items than were older children, with older children manifesting higher signal-detection indices. Statistically significant developmental improvements in monitoring at the item level, however, occurred in girls only.

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^☆: The authors would like to thank the teaching and administrative staff at the Manzano Day School for their cooperation in providing subjects for this study. Portions of this paper were presented at the meetings of the Rocky Mountain Psychological Association, Albuquerque, May 1972.

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Decision processes in children's recognition memory☆

Abstract

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

Cognitive Psychology

Visual and auditory information processing in children and adults

Science

Recognition memory of preschool children for pictures and words

Psychonomic Science

Criterion change in continuous recognition memory

Journal of Experimental Psychology

First discussant's comments: What is memory development the development of?

Human Development