The proposed research will examine the relationship between frontal lobe maturation and the development of episodic memory. To this end, 4- year-old children will participate in 6 tasks spread over 3 sessions. These include two measures thought to reflect frontal function, two tasks indexing episodic memory, one task assessing implicit memory and one task measuring general semantic memory. We have several behavioral and electrophysiological predictions we will test. First, children's performance on the episodic memory task and putative frontal measures will be positively correlated. Second, all children, regardless of their performance on episodic and frontal tasks, will show robust implicit memory and normal levels of semantic memory. Electrophysiological predictions include: children who are successful at the episodic memory tasks will show increased frontal lobe activation during these tasks and in a baseline condition as compared to children who are not successful. In addition, we predict increased occipital activation in the implicit memory task. However, no increase in frontal activation is predicted in this task.
