Distinctiveness; Memory; Heuristic; Metacognition; Children
Abstract :
[en] The primary aim of this study was to document the developmental course of distinctiveness effects throughout childhood. Specifically, we examined whether the reduction in false recognition rates that is traditionally observed in children after distinctive encoding could be explained not only by enhanced discrimination between studied and new items but also by the implementation of a conservative response criterion resulting from the use of metacognitive expectations about the quality of memories (i.e., distinctiveness heuristic). Two experiments were conducted in which children aged 4–5, 6–7, and 8–9 years old were asked to study a set of items presented either in pictorial (distinctive) or in word (less distinctive) form. In Experiment 1, pictures and words were displayed in two separate lists, a design that is supposed to favor reliance on the distinctiveness heuristic. In Experiment 2, the two types of stimuli were presented within the same list, a design that is supposed to make using the metacognitive heuristic ineffective. Overall, Experiments 1 and 2 provide evidence that children as young as 4 rely on the distinctiveness heuristic to guide their memory decisions, resulting in a reduction in the false recognition rate when items are presented using a pure-list design (Experiment 1), but not when they are presented using a mixed-list design (Experiment 2). The implications of these findings for our understanding of the development of metacognition and the involvement of metacognitive skills in children’s memory performance are discussed.
Disciplines :
Theoretical & cognitive psychology
Author, co-author :
Geurten, Marie ; Université de Liège - ULiège > Département de Psychologie > Neuropsychologie
Meulemans, Thierry ; Université de Liège - ULiège > Département de Psychologie > Neuropsychologie
Willems, Sylvie ; Université de Liège - ULiège > Clinique psychologique et logopédique universitaire (CPLU)
Language :
English
Title :
A closer look at children’s metacognitive skills: The case of the distinctiveness heuristic
Black, S.R., McCown, S., Lookadoo, R.L., Leonard, R.C., Kelley, M., DeCoster, J., Spence, S.A., Aging, imagery, and the bizarreness effect. Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition 19 (2012), 566–591.
Brainerd, C., Reyna, V., Ceci, S., Developmental reversals in false memory: A review of data and theory. Psychological Bulletin 134 (2008), 343–382.
Dienes, Z., Using Bayes to get the most out of non-significant results. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 2014, 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00781.
Dodson, C.S., Schacter, D.L., “If I had said it I would have remembered it”: Reducing false memories with a distinctiveness heuristic. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 8 (2001), 155–161.
Dodson, C.S., Schacter, D.L., When false recognition meets metacognition: The distinctiveness heuristic. Journal of Memory and Language 46 (2002), 782–803.
Fawcett, J.M., Quinlan, C.K., Taylor, T.L., Interplay of the production and picture superiority effects: A signal detection analysis. Memory 20 (2012), 655–666.
Forrin, N., Groot, B., MacLeod, C., The d-prime directive: Assessing costs and benefits in recognition by dissociating mixed-list false alarm rates. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 42 (2016), 1090–1111.
Fritz, K., Howie, P., Kleitman, S., “How do I remember when I got my dog?” The structure and development of children's metamemory. Metacognition and Learning 5 (2010), 207–228.
Gallo, D.A., Using recall to reduce false recognition: Diagnostic and disqualifying monitoring. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 30 (2004), 120–128.
Gallo, D.A., Bell, D.M., Beier, J.S., Schacter, D.L., Two types of recollection-based monitoring in younger and older adults: Recall-to-reject and the distinctiveness heuristic. Memory 14 (2006), 730–741.
Gerken, L., Balcomb, F.K., Minton, J.L., Infants avoid “labouring in vain” by attending more to learnable than unlearnable linguistic patterns. Developmental Science 14 (2011), 972–979.
Geurten, M., Lloyd, M.E., Willems, S., Hearing “quack” and remembering a duck: Evidence for fluency attribution in young children. Child Development 88 (2016), 514–522.
Geurten, M., Meulemans, T., Willems, S., Memorability in context: An heuristic story. Experimental Psychology 62 (2015), 306–319.
Geurten, M., Willems, S., Metacognition in early childhood: Fertile ground to understand memory development?. Child Development Perspectives 10 (2016), 263–268.
Geurten, M., Willems, S., Germain, S., Meulemans, T., Less is more: The availability heuristic in early childhood. British Journal of Developmental Psychology 33 (2015), 405–410.
Geurten, M., Willems, S., Meulemans, T., Are children conservative, liberal, or metacognitive? Preliminary evidence for the involvement of the distinctiveness heuristic in decision making. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 132 (2015), 230–239.
Geurten, M., Willems, S., Meulemans, T., Beyond the experience: Detection of metamemorial regularities. Consciousness and Cognition 33 (2015), 16–23.
Ghetti, S., Alexander, K.W., “If it happened, I would remember it”: Strategic use of event memorability in the rejection of false autobiographical events. Child Development 75 (2004), 542–561.
Ghetti, S., Castelli, P., Developmental differences in false-event rejection: Effects of memorability-based warnings. Memory 14 (2006), 762–776.
Ghetti, S., Qin, J., Goodman, G.S., False memories in children and adults: Age, distinctiveness, and subjective experience. Developmental Psychology 38 (2002), 705–718.
Gomes, C.F.A., Brainerd, C.J., Dual processes in the development of reasoning: The memory side of the theory. Barrouillet, P., Gauffroy, C., (eds.) The development of thinking and reasoning, 2013, Psychology Press, New York, 221–242.
Hembacher, E., Ghetti, S., Don't look at my answer: Subjective uncertainty underlies preschoolers’ exclusion of their least accurate memories. Psychological Science 25 (2014), 1768–1776.
Howe, M.L., Developmental invariance in distinctiveness effects in memory. Developmental Psychology 42 (2006), 1193–1205.
Howe, M.L., Courage, M.L., Vernescu, R., Hunt, M., Distinctiveness effects in children's long-term retention. Developmental Psychology 36 (2000), 778–792.
Huff, M.J., Bodner, G.E., Fawcett, J.M., Effects of distinctive encoding on correct and false memory: A meta-analytic review of costs and benefits and their origins in the DRM paradigm. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 22 (2015), 349–365.
Hunt, R.R., Precision in memory through distinctive processing. Current Directions in Psychological Science 22 (2013), 10–15.
Jarosz, A.F., Wiley, J., What are the odds? A practical guide to computing and reporting Bayes factors. Journal of Problem Solving 7 (2014), 2–9.
Lee, M.D., Wagenmakers, E.J., Bayesian cognitive modeling: A practical course. 2014, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
Lipowski, S.L., Merriman, W.E., Dunlosky, J., Preschoolers can make highly accurate judgments of learning. Developmental Psychology 49 (2013), 1505–1516.
Lyle, K., Johnson, M., Importing perceived features into false memories. Memory 14 (2006), 197–213.
Macmillan, N.A., Creelman, C.D., Detection theory: A user's guide. 2nd ed., 2005, Lawrence Erlbaum, Mahwah, NJ.
McDonough, I.M., Gallo, D.A., Illusory expectations can affect retrieval-monitoring accuracy. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 38 (2012), 391–404.
Metzger, R.L., Warren, A.R., Shelton, J.T., Price, J., Reed, A.W., Williams, D., Do children “DRM” like adults? False memory production in children. Developmental Psychology 44 (2008), 169–181.
Moore, K.N., Lampinen, J.M., Gallo, D.A., Adams, E.J., Bridges, A.J., Children's use of memory editing strategies to reject source misinformation. Child Development 89 (2017), 219–234.
Moore, K.N., Lampinen, J.M., Gallo, D.A., Bridges, A.J., Effects of feedback and test practice on recollection and retrieval monitoring: Comparing first graders, third graders, and adults. Memory 26 (2017), 424–438.
Ozubko, J.D., MacLeod, C.M., The production effect in memory: Evidence that distinctiveness underlies the benefit. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 36 (2010), 1543–1547.
Raaijmakers, M.A., Smidts, D.P., Sergeant, J.A., Maassen, G.H., Posthumus, J.A., van Engeland, H., Matthys, W., Executive functions in preschool children with aggressive behavior: Impairments in inhibitory control. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology 36 (2008), 1097–1107.
Radeau, M., Mousty, P., Content, A., Brulex: Une base de données lexicales informatisée pour le français écrit et parlé. L'année psychologique 90 (1990), 551–566.
Reyna, V.F., Brainerd, C.J., Fuzzy-trace theory: Some foundational issues. Learning and Individual Differences 7 (1995), 145–162.
Rossion, B., Pourtois, G., Revisiting Snodgrass and Vanderwart's object pictorial set: The role of surface detail in basic-level object recognition. Perception 33 (2004), 217–236.
Rotello, C.M., Macmillan, N.A., Van Tassel, G., Recall-to-reject in recognition: Evidence from ROC curves. Journal of Memory and Language 43 (2000), 67–88.
Schacter, D.L., Israel, L., Racine, C., Suppressing false recognition in younger and older adults: The distinctiveness heuristic. Journal of Memory and Language 40 (1999), 1–24.
Schneider, W., Lockl, K., Procedural metacognition in children: Evidence for developmental trends. Dunlosky, J., Bjork, R.A., (eds.) Handbook of metamemory and memory, 2008, Psychology Press, New York, 391–409.
Strack, F., Bless, H., Memory for nonoccurrences: Metacognitive and presuppositional strategies. Journal of Memory and Language 33 (1994), 203–217.
van de Schoot, R., Depaoli, S., Bayesian analyses: Where to start and what to report. European Health Psychologist 16 (2014), 75–84.
Wechsler, D., Echelle d'intelligence de Wechsler pour la période préscolaire et primaire: WPPSI-III. 2004, Les Editions du Centre de Psychologie Appliquée, Paris.
Wechsler, D., Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children: WISC-IV. 2005, Les Editions du Centre de Psychologie Appliquée, Paris.
