This project is concerned with the abilities of 3 to 7-year old children to remember personally-experienced events over extended delay intervals. The studies outlined examine children's long-term retention of the details of visits to the doctor for a regularly-scheduled physical examination, as well as three types of more stressful and less routine medical experiences: 1) an invasive radiological procedure involving urinary catheterization; 2) an emergency visit to a plastic surgeon for sutures; and 3) an initial appointment with a pediatric dentist. The proposed work stems from an informal framework that has been developed for exploring age differences in long-term retention. Of the 13 studies proposed, 11 are experiments that are designed to: a) examine factors such as prior knowledge, stress, and temperament that may be associated with the encoding and storage of personally-experienced events; b) investigate the extent to which intervening experiences during a long interval can affect memory representations and subsequent reports; and c) explore contextual variables that have the potential to affect the retrievability of stored information. An additional two studies involve interpretive activities that make use of an integrated across-study data base to evaluate the findings an explore a mathematical model for characterizing children's performance. This research should contribute to our understanding of the course of retention (and loss) of information about personally-experienced events over time and will also have implications for the management of children who provide testimony in the courts.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development (NICHD)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
5R01HD032114-02
Application #
2205063
Study Section
Special Emphasis Panel (ZRG1-HUD-3 (01))
Project Start
1994-09-01
Project End
1998-06-30
Budget Start
1995-07-01
Budget End
1996-06-30
Support Year
2
Fiscal Year
1995
Total Cost
Indirect Cost
Name
University of North Carolina Chapel Hill
Department
Psychology
Type
Schools of Arts and Sciences
DUNS #
078861598
City
Chapel Hill
State
NC
Country
United States
Zip Code
27599
Greenhoot, A F (2000) Remembering and understanding: the effects of changes in underlying knowledge on children's recollections. Child Dev 71:1309-28
Michel, M K; Gordon, B N; Ornstein, P A et al. (2000) The abilities of children with mental retardation to remember personal experiences: implications for testimony. J Clin Child Psychol 29:453-63
Ornstein, P A; Manning, E L; Pelphrey, K A (1999) Children's memory for pain. J Dev Behav Pediatr 20:262-77
Ornstein, P A (1995) Children's long-term retention of salient personal experiences. J Trauma Stress 8:581-605