Peter Krøjgaard - ResearchGate

Peter Krøjgaard - Google Scholar

Research interests:

I am generally interesting in infant cognition. Until recently, I have primarily been interested in infants' understanding of the physical world and concept formation. In particular I have done experimentally based work on object individuation, that is, the ability to decide the number of distinct objects present in a given scenario.

The Center on Autobiographical Memory Research was launched on the 1^st of January 2010. The center is financed by the Danish National Research Foundation, and lead by Prof. Dorthe Berntsen, and I work as a core member at the center. I the years to come I will mainly conduct experimentally based research on the development of event or episodic memory, that may be seen as pre-cursers for autobiographical memory proper in older children and adults. I am especially interested in issues related to event segmentation in infants, their ability to remember events (by means of deferred and elicited imitation), and the paradox of childhood amnesia.

Con Amore: Center on Autobiographical Memory Research

http://www.psy.au.dk/conamore

A new look at young children’s memory for autobiographical events (project financed by VELUX FONDEN, from Jan. 2016 - Dec 2019). 

When asked to recall past events, young children typically have difficulties retrieving and talking about such events. In accordance with such findings it has been claimed that episodic memory is a late developmental achievement. We here challenge this claim, which is based on the assumption that recall by default is deliberate and strategic. However, strategic recall is not the only way in which memories come to our minds. At times a memory comes to our mind spontaneously, that is, as if it comes to us almost ‘out of the blue’, without preceding attempts to recall the event. Spontaneous recall is assumed to be less cognitively demanding as it is primarily associative and does not depend on executive functions. For many years spontaneous recall in children had only been documented in diary studies. However, recently we succeeded to induce spontaneous memories experimentally. The aim of the present project is -- by means of the novel experimental paradigm -- to examine how early spontaneous recall can be induced in children and to specify the factors facilitating spontaneous recall. The project is basic research but is likely to have applied consequences for both witness psychology as well as for pedagogical psychology.