Electrophysiological indexes of encoding and behavioral indexes of recall: examining relations and developmental change late in the first year of life.

Long-term memory undergoes pronounced development in the latter part of the 1st year. This research combines electrophysiological (event-related potential [ERP]) and behavioral (deferred imitation) measures of encoding and recall, respectively, in an examination of age-related changes in and relations between encoding and recall during this time. In a short-term longitudinal study, infants were exposed to different multistep sequences at 9 and at 10 months. In both phases, they were tested for immediate recognition of the events via ERPs (as an index of encoding), and for recall of them 1 month later. At both ages, infants encoded the events; encoding was more robust at 10 months than at 9 months. After the 1-month delay, infants failed to recall the events experienced at 9 months, but evidenced recall of the events experienced at 10 months. In spite of developmental differences in encoding and recall over this period, indexes of encoding at 9 months were correlated with measures of recall of events experienced at 10 months and tested 1 month later.

Forming a stable memory representation in the first year of life: why imitation is more than child's play.

Although 9-month-old infants are capable of retaining temporally ordered information over long delays, this ability is relatively fragile. It may be possible to facilitate long-term retention by allowing infants to imitate event sequences immediately after their presentation. The effects of imitation on immediate and delayed recognition and on long-term recall were investigated using event-related potentials (ERPs) and elicited imitation, respectively. Mnemonic facilitation resulting from the opportunity to imitate was apparent using both assessments. ERP assessments at immediate and delayed recognition tests suggested that infants who were allowed to imitate had stronger memory representations of familiar stimuli relative to infants who only viewed the presentation of the events. In addition, infants who were allowed to imitate evidenced higher levels of ordered recall after 1 month relative to infants who only watched the experimenter's demonstration. Therefore, imitation proved to have beneficial effects on explicit memory in 9(1/2)-month-olds, providing evidence of its effectiveness as a tool to augment mnemonic capabilities in infancy.

Representation of the inner self in autobiography: women's and men's use of internal states language in personal narratives.

Adult women and men differ in the affective qualities of their autobiographical reports. In the present study, we tested whether gender differences in emotional content are apparent in memories of both the remote past and the recent past, as well as whether they extend to internal states other than emotion. A total of 48 women and 30 men provided written accounts of four events from early in life (events from before age 7) and four events from later in life (events from age 7 or later). The narratives were coded for mention of emotions, cognitions, perceptions, and physiological states. Women used more emotion terms in their descriptions of events from later in life, relative to men; across life phases, similar trends were observed for cognition and perception terms, but not for physiological states terms. The category of internal states terms was found to be more coherent for women than for men. Results are consistent with suggestions that females and males experience differential socialisation regarding expression of internal states.