Mark I. Appelbaum (1941-2020)

Memorializes Mark I. Appelbaum (1941-2020). Appelbaum was a giant in the field of quantitative psychology and developmental methodology. At the time of his passing, he was Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of California, San Diego. He was a distinguished researcher, teacher, and administrator who helped to transform research in psychology, education, and medicine by developing and applying methods for analyzing longitudinal data. He also was an award-winning teacher and mentor, an innovative administrator, and an individual with a passionate commitment to service-service to his colleagues, universities, and to the discipline. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Toward an Understanding of the Development of Skilled Remembering: The Role of Teachers’ Instructional Language

Although there is a rich literature on children’s strategies for remembering, little attention has been paid to characterizing developmental change within individual children and to examining mediators that may bring about such change. To address these issues, we assess children’s memory skills over time while simultaneously examining communicative interactions in the classroom. Children are not taught memory strategies in an explicit manner, but these skills emerge in the context of the elementary school classroom. Accordingly, we use longitudinal and experimental methodologies to examine the ways in which the language of instruction contributes to the development of children’s memory and cognitive skills. The basic findings are discussed here in terms of possible applications in the classroom that may impact teachers’ instruction and students’ learning.

Developmental trajectories of executive functions in young males with fragile X syndrome

BACKGROUND

Executive functions (EF) have been identified as impaired in FXS, but few studies have examined their developmental trajectories.

AIMS

The primary aim of this longitudinal study was to examine the development of EF in young males with FXS compared to Mental Age (MA)-matched controls.

METHODS AND PROCEDURES

The sample comprised 56 boys with FXS (ages 7-13 years), and 48 MA-matched typical boys (ages 4-8 years). EF tasks included measures of inhibitory control, working memory, cognitive flexibility/set-shifting, problem solving/planning, and processing speed. Tasks were administered at three time points over five-years.

OUTCOMES AND RESULTS

The MA-Matched Typical boys significantly outperformed the FXS boys on all EF tasks, with the FXS Group showing a pattern of slow, but positive growth on most EF tasks. For working memory tasks, significant interactions were noted between MA and autism symptom severity, and MA and medication status. The probability of task completion increased with higher MA.

CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS

These findings contribute to our understanding of the development of EF in this population. They also lay the foundation for use of EF tasks in treatment efforts, particularly with respect to documenting improvements and practice effects, and in understanding associations with targeted developmental outcomes.

Determinants of memory development in childhood and adolescence

Research on the development of memory has a long history and constitutes one of the most active research areas in the field of cognitive development. In this article, we first describe major historical developments in the literature on children's memory, focusing on systematic research that began in the late 1960s. We then examine new developments in the field, describing four important lines of inquiry: (a) the development of implicit memory, (b) short- and long-term memory development in infancy, (c) longitudinal research on memory strategies and metamemory, and (d) developmental cognitive neuroscience of memory. Finally, promising lines of future research on memory development are briefly discussed.

The Socialization of Children's Memory: Linking Maternal Conversational Style to the Development of Children's Autobiographical and Deliberate Memory Skills

Data from a large-scale, longitudinal research study with an ethnically and socioeconomically diverse sample were utilized to explore linkages between maternal elaborative conversational style and the development of children's autobiographical and deliberate memory. Assessments were made when the children were 3, 5, and 6 years of age, and the results reveal concurrent and longitudinal linkages between maternal conversational style in a mother-child reminiscing task and children's autobiographical memory performance. Maternal conversational style while reminiscing was also significantly related to children's strategic behaviors and recall in two deliberate memory tasks, both concurrently and longitudinally. Results from this examination replicate and extend what is known about the linkages between maternal conversational style, children's abilities to talk about previous experiences, and children's deliberate memory skills as they transition from the preschool to early elementary school years.

Children's memory of a physical examination: A comparison of recall and recognition assessment protocols

Previous studies of children's abilities to remember the details of salient personal experiences have consistently obtained age differences in various aspects of memory performance. For example, research on children's memory for recent physical examinations indicates that 3-year-olds provide less information in response to open-ended questions and exhibit more forgetting over time than do older children. Given these findings, the present studies were designed to explore further the abilities of 3-year-olds to remember a specified visit to the doctor. In contrast to earlier investigations, in which young children's memory was assessed solely by a verbal protocol that began with broad, open-ended questions, the two studies reported here explored the usefulness of a recognition-based assessment interview. Because of the context specificity that characterises children's memory performance, it was hypothesised that a recognition measure would provide a more sensitive index of the information available in young children's memory than would the standard interview, and thus lead to a reduction of the typically obtained age differences in performance. In contrast to these expectations, clear age differences in memory performance were observed among the children who received the recognition-based interview. Because these age differences stemmed largely from the 3-year-olds' high rate of false alarms to lures, the findings suggest that professionals who interview children should exercise caution when interpreting responses to yes-no questions. The convergence of these findings with recent results obtained in tests of Fuzzy-Trace Theory is also discussed.

Memory Development or the Development of Memory?

For 30 years, the question “What is memory development the development of?” has guided research on children's memory. As theories and research paradigms have evolved over this period, so too has knowledge of the surprising mnemonic competence of young children and of age-related differences in memory performance. Never the less, there are serious limits to current understanding of the development of memory. Indeed, there have been few investigations of changes over time in the memory skills of individual children, and researchers have yet to shed much light on the more difficult question of “What are the forces that propel the development of skilled remembering?” From our perspective, the answer to this question will require movement toward longitudinal research designs that illuminate the mechanisms that bring about developmental change.

Intimate partner violence and children's memory

The current study was designed to examine the relation between intimate partner violence (IPV) and children's memory and drew from a socioeconomically and racially diverse sample of children living in and around a midsized southeastern city (n = 140). Mother-reported IPV when the children were 30 months old was a significant predictor of children's short-term, working, and deliberate memory at 60 months of age, even after controlling for the children's sex and race, the families' income-to-needs ratio, the children's expressive vocabulary, and maternal harsh-intrusive parenting behaviors. These findings add to the limited extant literature that finds linkages between IPV and children's cognitive functioning and suggest that living in households in which physical violence is perpetrated among intimate partners may have a negative effect on multiple domains of children's memory development.

Change over Time: Conducting Longitudinal Studies of Children's Cognitive Development

Developmental scientists have argued that the implementation of longitudinal methods is necessary for obtaining an accurate picture of the nature and sources of developmental change (Magnusson & Cairns, 1996; Morrison & Ornstein, 1996; Magnusson & Stattin, 2006). Developmentalists studying cognition have been relatively slow to embrace longitudinal research, and thus few exemplar studies have tracked individual children's cognitive performance over time and even fewer have examined contexts that are associated with this growth. In this article we first outline some of the benefits of implementing longitudinal designs. Using illustrations from existing studies of children's basic cognitive development and of their school-based academic performance, we discuss when it may be appropriate to employ longitudinal (versus other) methods. We then outline methods for integrating longitudinal data into one's research portfolio, contrasting the leveraging of existing longitudinal data sets with the launching of new longitudinal studies in order to address specific questions concerning cognitive development. Finally, for those who are interested in conducting longitudinal investigations of their own, we provide practical on-the-ground guidelines for designing and carrying out such studies of cognitive development.

Creating illusions of knowledge: learning errors that contradict prior knowledge

Most people know that the Pacific is the largest ocean on Earth and that Edison invented the light bulb. Our question is whether this knowledge is stable, or if people will incorporate errors into their knowledge bases, even if they have the correct knowledge stored in memory. To test this, we asked participants general-knowledge questions 2 weeks before they read stories that contained errors (e.g., "Franklin invented the light bulb"). On a later general-knowledge test, participants reproduced story errors despite previously answering the questions correctly. This misinformation effect was found even for questions that were answered correctly on the initial test with the highest level of confidence. Furthermore, prior knowledge offered no protection against errors entering the knowledge base; the misinformation effect was equivalent for previously known and unknown facts. Errors can enter the knowledge base even when learners have the knowledge necessary to catch the errors.

Coherence of Personal Narratives across the Lifespan: A Multidimensional Model and Coding Method

Personal narratives are integral to autobiographical memory and to identity, with coherent personal narratives being linked to positive developmental outcomes across the lifespan. In this article, we review the theoretical and empirical literature that sets the stage for a new lifespan model of personal narrative coherence. This new model integrates context, chronology, and theme as essential dimensions of personal narrative coherence, each of which relies upon different developmental achievements and has a different developmental trajectory across the lifespan. A multidimensional method of coding narrative coherence (the Narrative Coherence Coding Scheme or NaCCS) was derived from the model and is described here. The utility of this approach is demonstrated by its application to 498 narratives that were collected in six laboratories from participants ranging in age from 3 years to adulthood. The value of the model is illustrated further by a discussion of its potential to guide future research on the developmental foundations of narrative coherence and on the benefits of personal narrative coherence for different aspects of psychological functioning.

Relations between children's metamemory and strategic performance: time-varying covariates in early elementary school

Although much is known about the development of memory strategies and metamemory during childhood, evidence for linkages between these memory skills, either concurrently or over time, has been limited. Drawing from a longitudinal investigation of the development of memory, repeated assessments of children's (N=107) strategy use and declarative metamemory were made to examine the development of these skills and the relations between them over time. Latent curve models were used first to estimate the trajectories of children's strategy use and metamemory and then to examine predictors of children's performance in each of these domains. Children's metamemory at the beginning of Grade 1 was linked to child- and home-level factors, whereas the development of both skills was related to maternal education level. Additional modeling of the longitudinal relations between strategic sorting and metacognitive knowledge indicated that metamemory at earlier time points was predictive of subsequent strategy use.

The development of children's early memory skills

A multitask battery tapping nonverbal memory and language skills was used to assess 60 children at 18, 24, and 30 months of age. Analyses focused on the degree to which language, working memory, and deliberate memory skills were linked concurrently to children's Elicited Imitation task performance and whether the patterns of association varied across the different ages. Language ability emerged as a predictor of immediate Elicited Imitation performance by 24 months of age and predicted delayed performance at each age. In addition to the contributions of language, children's abilities to search for and retrieve toys in the deliberate memory task were associated with their immediate Elicited Imitation performance at each age. In addition to language, working memory was positively associated with aspects of both immediate and delayed performance at all ages. The extent to which it was possible to replicate and extend previous cross-sectional work in this longitudinal study is discussed.

Mother-Child Joint Conversational Exchanges During Events: Linkages to Children's Memory Reports Over Time

This longitudinal study explores linkages between patterns of mother-child conversation as events unfold and children's subsequent event memory. A total of 89 mother-child dyads took part in novel "adventures" in their homes when the children were 36 and 42 months old. In contrast to "low joint talk" dyads, the conversations of "high joint talk" dyads were characterized by a high proportion of children's correct responses to their mothers' Wh- questions, and a low proportion of failures to respond to these queries. Children in the high joint talk dyads reported more in assessments of their memory at 36 and 42 months than their low joint talk counterparts. The results point to specific forms of elaborative conversational interactions that may be especially important for successful remembering.

Elaborative Talk During and After an Event: Conversational Style Influences Children's Memory Reports

An experimental design was utilized to examine the effects of elaborative talk during and/or after an event on children's event memory reports. Sixty preschoolers were assigned randomly to one of four conditions that varied according to a researcher's use of high or low elaborative during- and/or post-event talk about a camping event. In a memory conversation 1 day after the event, children who were engaged in high elaborative during-event talk and those whose memory conversation featured high elaborative post-event talk reported more information than children in low elaborative during- or post-event talk groups. Moreover, 3 weeks later, when a standard memory interview was conducted with all children, high elaborative during-event talk influenced the children's memory reports.

Memory skills of boys with fragile X syndrome

Multiple aspects of memory were examined in 42 boys with fragile X syndrome and a comparison group of 42 typically developing boys matched on MA. Working memory, incidental memory, and deliberate memory were assessed with a battery that included both free-recall and recognition tasks. Findings indicated that boys with fragile X syndrome performed more poorly than their matches on most measures. The exception was free recall, in which their accuracy was equal to that of the control participants. Results from analyses of a subset of boys with fragile X syndrome who exhibit characteristics of autism and their MA matches, though preliminary, support the conclusion that memory deficits are especially marked in boys who have fragile X syndrome and evidence autistic behaviors.

Linking teachers' memory-relevant language and the development of children's memory skills

This longitudinal study was designed to (a) examine changes in children's deliberate memory across the 1st grade; (b) characterize the memory-relevant aspects of their classrooms; and (c) explore linkages between the children's performance and the language their teachers use in instruction. To explore contextual factors that may facilitate the development of skills for remembering, 107 first graders were assessed 3 times with a broad set of tasks, while extensive observations were made in the 14 classrooms from which these children were sampled. When the participating teachers were classified as high or low in terms of their "mnemonic orientation," in part on the basis of their use of metacognitive information and requests for deliberate remembering during instruction in language arts and mathematics, differences were observed in the use of mnemonic techniques by the children in their classes. By the end of the year, the children drawn from these 2 groups of classrooms differed in their spontaneous use of simple behavioral strategies for remembering and in their response to training in more complex verbally based mnemonic techniques.

Reminiscing in the early years: Patterns of maternal elaborativeness and children's remembering

This study focused on individual differences in maternal style and children's developing recall abilities in early memory conversations. Within a longitudinal design, a sample of 56 mother—child dyads was observed while reminiscing, and the children's language skills were assessed when they were 18, 24, and 30 months old. In contrast to mothers classified as “low-eliciting,” mothers in a “high-eliciting” group offered more open-ended elaborative questions, fewer elaborative statements, and more confirmations to their 18-month-olds. Although all mothers increased in their elaborative questioning over time, the stylistic groups that were identified remained distinct. Moreover, children of high-eliciting mothers were providing more memory information, even at the first time point, than were children of low-eliciting mothers, but these differences were magnified at 24 and 30 months. Results of correlational and regression analysis further suggest that children's concurrent language skills, their 24-month recall abilities, and their mothers' reminiscing style when they were 18-months of age each contribute uniquely to the prediction of children's provision of memory elaborations in conversations about the past at 30 months of age.

Sustained attention and response inhibition in boys with fragile X syndrome: measures of continuous performance

Sustained attention and response inhibition were examined in boys with full mutation fragile X syndrome (FXS) using adapted visual and auditory continuous performance tests (CPTs). Only 61% of 56 boys with visual CPT data and 54% of 52 boys with auditory data were able to demonstrate sufficient understanding to complete the visual and auditory CPTs, respectively. Mental age (MA) predicted whether boys with FXS were able to demonstrate understanding of the CPTs. The performance of boys with FXS who were able to complete the CPTs was compared to a sample of boys without disabilities matched on MA. Boys with FXS demonstrated similar or smaller declines in sustained attention over task time than their MA-matched peers on the visual and auditory CPTs, respectively, but consistently demonstrated greater declines in response inhibition over task time than their MA-matched peers. There were no differences between groups for response time of hits. Higher MAs consistently predicted better sustained attention and response inhibition over task time on the visual and auditory CPTs. Furthermore, boys taking psychotropic medication performed better at the beginning of most tasks, although their performance deteriorated at a faster rate over time, and boys rated as meeting diagnostic criteria for ADHD-hyperactive type had more difficulty over task time with response inhibition on the auditory CPT. For both boys with FXS and their MA matches, performance was better on the visual CPT than on the auditory CPT though this effect may be attributable to a number of factors other than the modality.

The influence of prior knowledge and repeated questioning on children's long-term retention of the details of a pediatric examination

Children's recall of the details of pediatric examinations was examined over the course of a 6-month interval. Although the 83 4- to 7-year-old participants reported a substantial amount of information at each assessment, performance declined over time, dropping sharply over the course of 3 months but then remaining constant out to the final interview at 6 months. As expected, older children provided more total information than younger children did and reported a greater proportion of the event components in response to general rather than specific questions. However, comparable patterns of remembering and forgetting over time were observed at each age level. In addition, no effects of repeated questioning--in the form of an interview at 3 months for half of the children--were observed on performance at the 6-month assessment. Moreover, children's prior knowledge about routine doctor visits was assessed before the checkup for half of the participants at each age and was associated with initial but not delayed recall. Although knowledge increased with age as expected, it nonetheless affected recall over and above the influence of age.

Mother-child conversational interactions as events unfold: linkages to subsequent remembering

The study reported here was designed to examine linkages between mother-child conversational interactions during events and children's subsequent recall of these activities. In this longitudinal investigation, 21 mother-child dyads were observed while they engaged in specially constructed activities when the children were 30, 36, and 42 months of age. Analyses of the children's 1-day and 3-week recall of these events indicated that at all age points, features of the activities that were jointly handled and jointly discussed by the mother and child were better remembered than were features that were either (1) jointly handled and talked about only by the mother, or (2) jointly handled and not discussed. Potential linkages were also explored between incidental memory for personal experiences and deliberate recall of familiar but arbitrary materials. In this regard, children's recall of the special activities was positively correlated with their recall of objects in a deliberate memory task performed at 42 months.

Children's testimony: a review of research on memory for past experiences

This review of children's testimony focuses on research related to memory for past experiences. The aspects of the memory system that are involved in testimony are discussed and the development of autobiographical memory is examined. Relevant research findings are summarized in the context of an information-processing model of memory and the implications of this work for clinical practice are outlined. We conclude that (1) under certain conditions, even very young children can remember and report past experiences with some accuracy over very long periods of time; (2) substantial and significant developmental differences have been demonstrated in children's abilities to provide eyewitness testimony; (3) children can be influenced in a variety of ways to provide complete and elaborated reports of events that never occurred; and (4) even experts cannot always tell the difference between true and false reports.

The abilities of children with mental retardation to remember personal experiences: implications for testimony

Investigated the abilities of children with mental retardation to remember the details of a personally experienced event. A simulated health check was administered to 20 children with mental retardation and 40 normally developing children, half matched on mental age (MA) and half matched on chronological age (CA) with the children with mental retardation. The children's memory was assessed immediately after the health check and 6 weeks later. Overall, the children with mental retardation accurately recalled the health check features, provided detail, and resisted misleading questions about features that did not occur. The group with mental retardation performed similarly to the MA matches on virtually all of the memory variables. The children with mental retardation performed worse than the CA matches on most of the memory variables, although they were able to recall a similar number of features. The findings are discussed in terms of the ability of children with mental retardation to provide accurate testimony.

Children's memory for pain

Although there is a rich body of research on the development of children's memory for the details of personally experienced events, relatively little is known about age-related changes in the ability to remember pain. This gap in the literature is surprising, given that studies of children's memory for painful experiences are relevant to our basic understanding of cognitive development, pain perception, and--in some situations--patient management. This article examines what is known about children's memory for pain, given its inherent importance, working from the vantage point of the literature on the development of autobiographical memory. In doing so, the authors make use of an informal information-processing framework to organize their thoughts about the acquisition, retention, and distortion of information about painful experiences. Nonetheless, the authors recognize that this framework will no doubt need to be modified to take into account the complex memory representations--containing somatosensory, affective, and contextual information--that are established after exposure to painful stimulation. After the treatment of the literature, the authors discuss its implications for the clinical management of pain in pediatric settings.

Acting out the details of a pediatric check-up: the impact of interview condition and behavioral style on children's memory reports

This investigation was designed to determine whether an enactment interview condition involving a doll and props, in contrast to a verbal interview, would enhance 3- and 5-year-olds' (N = 62) recall of a pediatric examination. An additional aim was to explore the influence of behavioral styles and language skills on children's performance, and the extent to which these relations varied by age and interview condition. Both 1- and 6-weeks following their check-ups, the children in the enactment condition, particularly the 3-year-olds, provided more spontaneous, elaborate reports than did those assessed with a verbal protocol. Nonetheless, enactment also resulted in increased errors by the 3-year-olds at the first interview, and by children in both age groups after the 6-week delay. The age and interview condition effects, however, were moderated by the children's behavioral characteristics. Among the younger children, a measure of manageability predicted performance in the enactment setting, whereas an indicator of persistence was associated with recall in the verbal condition. The results have implications for an understanding of children's memory of events and of their ability to provide testimony in legal settings.

Children's long-term retention of salient personal experiences

Research on young children's long-term retention is reviewed in this article. More specifically, the abilities of 3- to 7-year-olds to remember the details of two types of medical experiences--a routine physical examination and an invasive radiological procedure--are discussed in the context of a framework for considering the flow of information in the developing memory system. The framework emphasizes four general themes about memory performance and provides a vehicle for relating research on memory development to discussions of children's testimony and adults' abilities to remember early experiences.

Children's memory for a salient medical procedure: implications for testimony

OBJECTIVE

Protecting sexually abused children hinges on their ability to remember and report events surrounding alleged incidents of abuse. This study was designed to provide information on young children's memory and recall of stressful experiences.

METHODOLOGY

Children's memory for features of a voiding cystourethrogram (VCUG) experience were examined because this invasive procedure is similar in many respects to incidents of sexual abuse. The recall performance of 24 3- to 7-year-olds was assessed immediately after the VCUG and after a delay of 6 weeks using a hierarchically structured interview protocol including both open-ended and more specific questions. To assess correlations between recall performance and distress, behavioral and physiological indicators of distress were measured during the procedure.

RESULTS

The children remembered 88% of the component features of the VCUG experience at the initial assessment and 83% after 6 weeks. Behavioral and salivary cortisol measures indicated that the children were distressed during the procedure. Although several of the behavioral measures were correlated negatively with the amount of recall, levels of salivary cortisol did not predict the children's recall performance.

CONCLUSION

The findings suggest that, under some conditions, young children can provide accurate and detailed reports of personally experienced distressful events.