In the present study, we examined the development of episodic memory and episodic foresight. Three- and 5-year-olds were interviewed individually using a personalised timeline that included photographs of them at different points in their life. After constructing the timeline with the experimenter, each child was asked to discuss a number of…

Adolescents (N = 46; M = 12.46 years) who had previously participated in a longitudinal study of autobiographical memory development narrated their early childhood memories, interpreted life events, and completed a family history questionnaire and language assessment. Three distinct components of adolescent memory emerged: (1) age of earliest…

Items studied as pictures are better remembered than items studied as words even when test items are presented as words. The present study examined the development of this picture superiority effect in recognition memory. Four groups ranging in age from 7 to 20 years participated. They studied words and pictures, with test stimuli always presented…

Some recent evidence suggests that mental rotation of characters in children aged 7 or 8 years might be lateralized to the left parietal hemisphere. An alternative statement exists, however, the finding might be completely unspecific for mental rotation but either be simply a function of task difficulty or a consequence of the use of characters as…

The present study investigated event-based prospective memory in five age groups of preschoolers (i.e., 2-, 3-, 4-, 5-, and 6-year-olds). Applying a laboratory-controlled prospective memory procedure, the data showed that event-based prospective memory performance improves across the preschool years, at least between 3 and 6 years of age. However,…

Metacognition is a multidimensional construct with two main dimensions: knowledge about cognition and regulation of cognition. The present study aimed to model the development of young pupils' metacognitive abilities in mathematics in relation to processing efficiency, working memory and mathematical performance. We developed instruments measuring…

This study investigated the claim that memory for scenes is qualitatively similar in children and adults. The effects of three schema-related processes on scene memory were tested with 5- to 7-year-old and adult subjects. Both children and adults used two of these processes (added unexpected object effect and congruency effect) but not the third…

Examined changes in preschoolers' ability to distinguish among memories of performed, pretended, and imagined episodes, and used source monitoring as a tool for inferring the nature of preschoolers' conceptualization of pretense. Found significant improvements between ages three and four in their ability to distinguish performed actions from…

Perspectives on reality monitoring and sociocultural learning were integrated in four studies of children's memory of contributions to the outcomes of collaborative exchanges. Findings suggested that reality-monitoring judgments reflect at least two cognitive processes, appropriation and attention to source of information, and may provide clues to…