what is an infants way of communicating since they cannot verbally?
behavioural indicators (gaze or motor responses)
Friedman (1972) study
infants were shown series of checkerboards.
they found that looking time changed systematically, indicating habituation
this suggests that infants behaviour is changed by prior exposure, suggesting evidence of learning and memory
Hill et al (1998)
attached mobile to infants leg via a ribbon
infant’s kicking caused mobile to move
then cut the ribbon and tested recall after several days
what were the findings of Hill et al (1998) ribbon study
found that forgetting occurred over time
performance was initially higher for familiar mobiles, some retained memory
this could reflect conditioning rather than memory
what is implicit memory?
automatic non-conscious
what is explicit memory?
conscious recall
what are good tasks to test memory?
recall tasks e.g. whats his name?
what is deferred imitation?
child observes an adult performing an action, then later reproduces it w/o cues
what were Klein and Meltzoff’s (1999) findings?
found that infants who saw demonstration were able to reproduce the action 1 week later
this suggests preverbal recall exists, but memory becomes richer once language develops
semantic memory
facts, knowledge
episodic memory
personal experience
autonoetic consciousness
aware of oneself as the experiencer of episodic events
early autobiographical memory
adult’s responses to cue word prompts show that earliest memories cluster around 3-4 years old
(Bauer 2020)
Tustin and Hayne (2010)
found adults rarely recall before age of three. however children under three remember.
this suggests a rapid forgetting, or later access problems rather than total absence of memory
rapid forgetting
Bauer (2020) found evidence that suggests young children forget faster possibly due to immature neural systems (similar pattern to Hill et al, memory retention decays quickly
encoding retrieval overlap
retrieval depends on similarity between current and original context (adults are psychologically and linguistically different from 2 yr old)
conceptual frameworks
early experiences not well integrated into mature schemas
self-concept
early self is underdeveloped, limited autonoetic consciousness
Salem witch trials and Swedish witch panic (Sjöberg, 1995)
highlighted danger of child EW testimony
child had fantastical account of being taken by with on goat.
found reliability increases with age
why are younger children more susceptible (Ceci & Bruck 1993)
- less reliable storage and retrieval of memory
- tendency to please adults
- lack of source discrimination (what they heard, saw or imagined)
source discrimination (ackil & Zaragoza 1995)
pps watched a video and later heard spoken summary containing additional details. then asked what was in the video
found misattribution errors were more common in younger children. suggestibility stems partly from source monitoring failures
