Sources of Interference in Memory across Development [post]

Hyungwook Yim, Adam F Osth, Vladimir Sloutsky, Simon Dennis
2020 unpublished
Episodic memory involves remembering not only what happened but also the context of the event such as where and when it happened. This multi-component nature of episodic memory introduces different sources of interference, each of which may cause forgetting or memory distortions. However, it is unclear how different sources of interference change across development and what causes the changes. Here, we tested 4-5-year-olds, 7-8-year-olds, and adults in a series of recognition tasks with a
more » ... hensive set of manipulations, and decomposed different sources of interference using a computational model. Results showed that interference stemming from other items during study rapidly decreases early in development, while interference from pre-experimental contexts gradually decreases throughout adulthood and remains as the major source of interference. The model accounts for this change through an early development in the ability to discriminate items and a more gradual development in the ability to discriminate contexts.
doi:10.31234/osf.io/7uvcd fatcat:yl55zhebnravnnmulmdjedtnnq