Real-time Assessment of Looking Time at Central Environmental Cues for Spontaneous Recall in 35-month-olds

TY - JOUR

T1 - Real-time Assessment of Looking Time at Central Environmental Cues for Spontaneous Recall in 35-month-olds

AU - Hjuler, Tirill Fjellhaugen

AU - Sonne, Trine

AU - Kingo, Osman Skjold

AU - Berntsen, Dorthe

AU - Krøjgaard, Peter

PY - 2021

Y1 - 2021

N2 - Evidence supporting the assumption that spontaneous recall of previously experienced events is triggered by distinct, environmental cues has hitherto exclusively been based on post-hoc reasoning and not on direct, in vivo examination. Using a novel experimental paradigm, we present the first real-time analyses of 35-month-old’s looking time as spontaneous retrieval unfolds. Twenty-nine middle-to-higher SES children (out of 114 participating) spontaneously recalled having taken part in either a Teddy or a Game event (adjacently placed in two unique boxes) when returning to the lab one week later. Naïve coders registered looking time towards the two dissimilar looking boxes 10 s preceding spontaneous recall. The children having spontaneous recollections looked reliably longer at their Target box (relative to Foil), whereas this was not the case for a group of matched (by gender, event, and CDI) controls producing no spontaneous memories. The findings are important for understanding how visual attention facilitates spontaneous recall.

AB - Evidence supporting the assumption that spontaneous recall of previously experienced events is triggered by distinct, environmental cues has hitherto exclusively been based on post-hoc reasoning and not on direct, in vivo examination. Using a novel experimental paradigm, we present the first real-time analyses of 35-month-old’s looking time as spontaneous retrieval unfolds. Twenty-nine middle-to-higher SES children (out of 114 participating) spontaneously recalled having taken part in either a Teddy or a Game event (adjacently placed in two unique boxes) when returning to the lab one week later. Naïve coders registered looking time towards the two dissimilar looking boxes 10 s preceding spontaneous recall. The children having spontaneous recollections looked reliably longer at their Target box (relative to Foil), whereas this was not the case for a group of matched (by gender, event, and CDI) controls producing no spontaneous memories. The findings are important for understanding how visual attention facilitates spontaneous recall.

KW - Spontaneous recall

KW - Cues

KW - Looking time

KW - Memory

KW - Development

KW - Young children

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85098095250&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1016/j.cogdev.2020.100995

DO - 10.1016/j.cogdev.2020.100995

M3 - Journal article

SN - 0885-2014

VL - 57

JO - Cognitive Development

JF - Cognitive Development

M1 - 100995

ER -