About this srcd poster session

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Panel information
Panel 1. Attention, Learning, Memory

Abstract

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While case studies have provided important insights regarding child development in areas such as language or cognition (e.g., Piaget, 1954; Tomasello, 1992), this approach has seldomly been used for understanding autobiographical memory development. Although few cases in this field have provided important insights regarding autobiographical memory (e.g., Hudson, 1990; Nelson, 2006), to date no systematic investigation has been carried out focusing on cases of spontaneous recall across an extended period of time. Spontaneous recall refers to memories that are remembered ‘out of the blue’ with no direct attempt at recall, in contrast to strategic recall, where a memory is retrieved through a deliberate search (Krøjgaard et al., 2022).
Recent research from several laboratory experiments have shown that young children recall events spontaneously (e.g., Sonne et al., 2019; 2023). Furthermore, it has been documented that whereas 3- and 4-year-olds perform at a similar level on spontaneous recall, 3-year-olds are systematically outperformed by 4-year-olds when being asked to strategically recall the same event (e.g., Jensen et al., 2022; Krøjgaard et al., 2017). Based on these results it has been suggested that children’s mnemonic competencies may have been underestimated due to the predominant focus in the literature on strategic recall. Spontaneous recall may be less cognitively demanding because prefrontal cortex is less involved in spontaneous retrieval relative to strategic retrieval. Whereas cross-sectional experimental studies have provided insights regarding the striking interaction between age and retrieval mode in three- and four-year-olds (e.g., Krøjgaard et al., 2017), and diary-studies typically have documented phenomenological characteristics of spontaneous recall in children’s everyday lives in shorter time spans (i.e., up to two weeks, e.g., Hjuler et al., 2023), longitudinal data on spontaneous recollections is lacking. As a novel approach we therefore decided to run a case study exploring how spontaneous recall develops over time in two young girls aged 26 months and 44 months.
In this case study, we followed the development of the two girls’ ability to spontaneously form and talk about memories for personal events. By use of a systematic diary method inspired by the procedure developed by Berntsen (1996), two of the authors noted the girls’ spontaneous recollections across 6 months. We collected characteristics such as: number of days since the remembered event took place, the cue triggering the memory, and the emotional valence of the event remembered. Furthermore, we tested the children’s ability to talk about a selection of the events from the diaries. That is, we asked them to strategically recall events that we knew for certain had already been encoded and remembered spontaneously at an earlier point. We assessed their language abilities by use of the Expressive One-Word Picture Vocabulary Test prior to and at the end of data collection. While results are currently being analyzed, they will be ready for the conference. We expect to find similar results to the study by Hjuler et al. (2023) showing that 34–36-month-olds spontaneous memories are often triggered by ‘objects’ or ‘something said’ and that the valence of the memories were primarily positive.

Author information

Author	Role
Dr. Trine Sonne, Department of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, Aarhus University	Presenting author
Toril S. Jensen, VIA University College	Non-presenting author
Osman S. Kingo, Department of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, Aarhus University	Non-presenting author
Dorthe Berntsen, Department of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, Aarhus University	Non-presenting author
Peter Krøjgaard, Department of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, Aarhus University	Non-presenting author

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