Developmental differences in the ability to provide temporal information about repeated events
Date
2015
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Publisher
Applied Cognitive Psychology
Abstract
Children (n = 372) aged 4 - 8 years participated in 1 or 4 occurrences of a similar event and were
interviewed 1 week later. Compared to 85% of children who participated once, less than 25%
with repeated experience gave the exact number of times they participated, although all knew
they participated more than once. Children with repeated experience were asked additional
temporal questions and there were clear developmental differences. Older children were more
able than younger children to judge relative order and temporal position of the four occurrences.
They also demonstrated improved temporal memory for the first and last relative to the middle
occurrences, while younger children did so only for the first. This is the first systematic
demonstration of children’s memory for temporal information after a repeated event. We discuss
implications for theories of temporal memory development and the practical implications of
asking children to provide temporal information.
Description
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Keywords
child witness, child abuse, temporal memory, investigative interviews, repeated-event memory
Citation
Roberts, K. P., Brubacher, S. P., Drohan‐Jennings, D., Glisic, U., Powell, M. B., & Friedman, W. J. (2015). Developmental differences in the ability to provide temporal information about repeated events. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 29(3), 407-417.