Long-term autobiographical memory across middle childhood: patterns, predictors, and implications for conceptualizations of childhood amnesia.

We examined recall of events by children 4-11 years to inform patterns of retention of autobiographical memories as well as factors that predict their survival. 101 children participated in a 4-year prospective study. At study inception, children were 4, 6, and 8 years. They were tested annually for three more years for a total of four waves of data collection. At each wave, we obtained narrative reports of recent (all waves) and distant (Waves 2-4) events, resulting in virtually continuous sampling of memories formed by 4- to 11-year-olds and recalled after 1-3-year delays. We also measured children's language, and domain-general and memory-specific cognitive skills. Multi-level modelling revealed age-related increases in the likelihood of survival of memories over the delays. Critically, the rate of increase in retention of individual memories was the same across the cohorts. In addition to age, thematic coherence of original memory reports predicted memory survivability. Other factors were not predictive. The dense sampling and prospective tracking of memories across the 4-11-year age period permitted an especially strong test for continuity versus discontinuity in autobiographical memory across the second half of the first decade of life. The data are strongly indicative of continuity and gradual change.

It's all about location, location, location: children's memory for the "where" of personally experienced events.

Episodic memory is defined as the ability to recall specific past events located in a particular time and place. Over the preschool and into the school years, there are clear developmental changes in memory for when events took place. In contrast, little is known about developmental changes in memory for where events were experienced. In the current research, we tested 4-, 6-, and 8-year-old children's memories for specific laboratory events, each of which was experienced in a unique location. We also tested the children's memories for the conjunction of the events and their locations. Age-related differences were observed in all three types of memory (event, location, and conjunction of event and location), with the most pronounced differences being in memory for conjunctions of events and their locations. The results have implications for our understanding of the development of episodic memory, including suggestions of protracted development of the ability to contextualize events in their spatial locations.

Becoming a teller of tales: associations between children's fictional narratives and parent-child reminiscence narratives.

Previous research has revealed a connection between the contributions parents make while reminiscing and their children's narratives for personally experienced events. The current research expands the literature by focusing on the connection between parental reminiscing and children's production of fictional narratives. After 4- to 9-year-olds and their parents reminisced about past shared events, the children (with an experimenter) produced narratives based on wordless picture books. The results revealed that the overall quality of the fictional narratives was correlated with parents' provision statements that emphasized orientation and evaluation in the reminiscence narrative. For younger children, correlations held for reminiscence narratives about recent events. For older children, correlations held for reminiscence narratives about events from the distant past. The results are consistent with the suggestion that children learn general storytelling skills from adult models.

Autobiographical narratives of deaf and hearing adults: an examination of narrative coherence and the use of internal states.

To examine the impact of early linguistic experiences on later verbal report of autobiographical memory, 13 hearing adults and 13 deaf adults born to hearing parents described events that occurred before and after the age of 10 years. The contextual, temporal, and thematic coherence of the narratives was rated. The use of emotional, perceptual, mental, and physiological states was also recorded. There were differences in the coherence of the narratives and use of internal states according to the age at which the events occurred. There were no group differences in coherence, but hearing adults provided longer narratives than deaf adults. When narrative length was controlled, deaf adults included more emotional states than hearing adults. Results suggest that early unavailability of language does not impact the coherence of adults' narratives, although certain features of linguistic expression specific to ASL may result in greater saturation of emotional states references in autobiographical narratives of deaf adults.

A longitudinal study of gendered vocabulary and communicative action in young children.

Development of children's vocabularies for gender-typed words and communicative actions was investigated longitudinally from 13 to 36 months and in a group of 9.5-month-olds. Vocabularies of gendered words were assessed using lists of adult-rated gender-typed words from the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (CDI; L. Fenson et al., 1994). At 24 to 36 months, girls' and boys' productive vocabularies contained more same-gender-typed words than other-gender-typed words. Receptive vocabulary gender-differential effects were apparent among boys at 18 months. At 13 and 18 months, gender-typed differences were apparent in communicative actions. The research reveals the utility of unobtrusive, nonexperimental measures for assessing gender-related knowledge and behavior in young children.

When language affects cognition and when it does not: an analysis of grammatical gender and classification.

The focus of this work was on the relation between grammatical gender and categorization. In one set of studies, monolingual English-, Spanish-, French-, and German-speaking children and adults assigned male and female voices to inanimate objects. Results from Spanish and French speakers indicated effects of grammatical gender on classification; results from German speakers did not. A connectionist model simulated the contradicting findings. The connectionist networks were also used to investigate which aspect of grammatical gender was responsible for the different pattern of findings. The predictions from the connectionist simulations were supported by the results from an artificial language-learning task. The results from this work demonstrate how connectionist networks can be used to identify the differences between languages that affect categorization.

Young Children's Memory for the Times of Personal Past Events.

Remembering the temporal information associated with personal past events is critical for autobiographical memory, yet we know relatively little about the development of this capacity. In the present research, we investigated temporal memory for naturally occurring personal events in 4-, 6-, and 8-year-old children. Parents recorded unique events in which their children participated during a 4-month period. At test, children made relative recency judgments and estimated the time of each event using conventional time-scales (time of day, day of week, month of year, and season). Children also were asked to provide justifications for their time-scale judgments. Six- and 8-year-olds, but not 4-year-olds, accurately judged the order of two distinct events. There were age-related improvements in children's estimation of the time of events using conventional time-scales. Older children provided more justifications for their time-scale judgments compared to younger children. Relations between correct responding on the time-scale judgments and provision of meaningful justifications suggest that children may use that information to reconstruct the times associated with past events. The findings can be used to chart a developmental trajectory of performance in temporal memory for personal past events, and have implications for our understanding of autobiographical memory development.

Treatment of local-anesthetic toxicity with lipid emulsion therapy.

PURPOSE: The use of lipid emulsion to treat local-anesthetic toxicity is discussed. SUMMARY: Systemic toxicity from local anesthetics is a rare but potentially fatal complication of regional anesthesia. There is increasing evidence that lipid emulsion may be an effective treatment to reverse the cardiac and neurologic effects of local-anesthetic toxicity. A literature search identified seven case reports of local-anesthetic toxicity in which lipid emulsion was used. Lipid emulsion was found to be successful in the treatment of local-anesthetic toxicity associated with various regional anesthetic techniques and multiple local anesthetics. The majority of patients in the case reports reviewed were unresponsive to initial management of local-anesthetic toxicity with standard resuscitative measures, but all recovered completely after receiving lipid emulsion therapy. The initial dose of lipid emulsion administered varied among the case reports, as well as whether a lipid emulsion infusion was started and at what point during resuscitation. Based on the case reports reviewed, an initial bolus dose of 1.5 mL/kg followed by an infusion of 10 mL/min as soon as local-anesthetic toxicity is suspected seems most beneficial. The pharmacokinetics of lipid emulsion therapy in the treatment of local-anesthetic toxicity has not been fully elucidated but likely involves increasing metabolism, distribution, or partitioning of the local anesthetic away from receptors into lipid within tissues. CONCLUSION: Lipid emulsion has been reported useful in the treatment of systemic toxicity caused by local anesthetics. The mechanism of effect is unclear, and evidence for the benefit of lipid therapy in humans is from case reports only.

Using cue words to investigate the distribution of autobiographical memories in childhood.

The cue-word technique is frequently used with adults to examine the distribution of autobiographical memories across the life span. Such studies demonstrate childhood amnesia: a paucity of memories of events from the first 3(1/2) years of life, and a gradually increasing number of memories from age 3 to age 7. The pattern is remarkable in light of findings of autobiographical competence among children in the period of life eventually obscured by this amnesia. In the present study, we modified the cue-word task for use with school-age children. Seven- to 10-year-olds successfully generated and dated memories of past events. Girls provided more complete narratives than boys. Across the sample, the resulting distribution of memories was better fit by an exponential than by a power function, implying that early memories may not consolidate and instead remain vulnerable to interference. Implications for explanations of childhood amnesia are discussed.

Understanding the emotional past: relations between parent and child contributions in emotionally negative and nonnegative events.

The past event conversations of 33 mothers with their 3-year-old children (18 girls and 15 boys) were selected from a larger sample based on their discussion of negative events. Negative events included both those that were negative in topic and those that contained negative incidents but were otherwise positively themed. Within-subjects comparisons were made between the negative events and a neutral or positive event. There were few differences in how mothers and their children talked about negative and nonnegative events. Children did include more interpretations (internal state and causal references) in their negative event conversations. For both event types, mothers who talked more about the past events had children who reported more. When maternal talkativeness was controlled, involving children in the negative event conversations through deflecting the conversational turn predicted children's total contributions and number of interpretations. Repeating information and requests for information while constraining the topic was negatively related to the number of details children reported for nonnegative past events. Conversations about minor negative experiences demonstrate that mothers can influence children's involvement in discussions and understanding of the past.