Memory for the temporal order of past events is a critical capacity; however, relatively little is known about its development and the processes that support it in early to middle childhood. The aim of this study was to examine children's memory for the temporal order of real-world events. Four-five-year-old (n = 36), 6-7-year-old (n = 45) and…

Purpose: As young people are seeking degrees that will help them with employment and as universities seek ways to increase enrollment and retention, the emphasis of the value of higher education has emerged as an important aspect in achieving these goals. The focus of this particular study, where a paucity currently exists, was to examine the…

Remembering temporal information associated with personal past events is critical. Yet little is known about the development of temporal order memory for naturally occurring events. In the current research, 8- to 10-year-old children and adults took photographs daily for 4 weeks. Later, they participated in a primacy/recency task (were shown 2 of…

The second year of life is marked by pronounced changes in the length of time over which events are remembered. We tested whether the age-related differences are related to differences in memory for the specific features of events. In our study, 16- and 20-month-olds were tested for immediate and long-term recall of individual actions and temporal…

In the present study, we examined the development of episodic memory and episodic foresight. Three- and 5-year-olds were interviewed individually using a personalised timeline that included photographs of them at different points in their life. After constructing the timeline with the experimenter, each child was asked to discuss a number of…

Autobiographical reasoning is closely related to the development of normative ideas about life as measured by the cultural life script. The acquisition of a life script is an important prerequisite for autobiographical reasoning because children learn through the life script which events are expected to go into their life story, and when to expect…

We conducted three experiments to investigate how opportunities to view objects together in time influence memory for location. Children and adults learned the locations of 20 objects marked by dots on the floor of an open, square box. During learning, participants viewed the objects either simultaneously or in isolation. At test, participants…

In this study of the distinction between temporal distance and location, children were asked to judge the relative recency and time of target events that occurred one and seven weeks before testing. All judged recency and localized time of day correctly. Six- and eight- but not four-year olds localized longer time scales. (BC)

Tested 3-, 5-, and 8-year-olds on temporal generalization with visual stimuli. Found increasing sharpness of generalization gradient with increasing age, and change from symmetrical to adult-like asymmetrical generalization gradients among 8-year-olds. Theoretical models attributed changes to increasing precision of the reference memory with…

The knowledge system of the young child is considered script-based, where script is used (in the Schank and Abelson 1977 sense) as a frame defining an expected sequence of actions in a given context involving props, scenes, and actors. This study was concerned with how scripts may be influenced by the structure of different events and the child's…

No age difference was observed on the temporal task, but older adults performed worse on the spatial task. Results indicate normal aging is not associated with poor encoding or retention of all types of information, but affects retention of some information often assumed to be encoded automatically. (Author)

Examines the role of organization in adults' processing of stories. Canonical stories were better recalled than noncanonical stories by all three age groups (young, middle-aged, and old adults), and a variety of measures indicated that older adults' recall was both quantitatively and qualitatively similar to that of young adults. (SL)

Examined developmental changes in the use of distance-based and calendar-based approaches to estimate the recency of two events. Found that children's ability to discriminate temporal relationships between two events appears by four to five years of age. In contrast, use of calendar information and cognizance of annual patterns was found only in…

Research in aging has placed considerable faith in data collected from the recollections and reminiscences of older people. Retrospective reports were verified against previously collected data to determine the accuracy of topical information provided by anamnestic reports as well as the types of persons most likely to be accurate reporters.…

Temporal orientation may be defined as a central aspect of identity that pertains to the individual's unique interpretation of the life course. As a component of identity, temporal orientation should be affected by social contextual variables. Temporal orientation was assessed in a random sample of 94 men and women aged 24-61 years. Respondents…