Retro- and prospection for mental time travel: emergence of episodic remembering and mental rotation in 5- to 8-year old children.
We investigate the common development of children's ability to "look back in time" (retrospection, episodic remembering) and to "look into the future" (prospection). Experiment 1 with 59 children 5 to 8.5 years old showed mental rotation, as a measure of prospection, explaining specific variance of free recall, as a measure of episodic remembering (retrospection) when controlled for cued recall. Experiment 2 with 31 children from 5 to 6.5 years measured episodic remembering with recall of visually experienced events (seeing which picture was placed inside a box) when controlling for recall of indirectly conveyed events (being informed about the pictures placed inside the box by showing the pictures on a monitor). Quite unexpectedly rotators were markedly worse on indirect items than non-rotators. We speculate that with the ability to rotate children switch from knowledge retrieval to episodic remembering, which maintains success for experienced events but has detrimental effects for indirect information.
Perner
Josef
J
Department of Psychology, University of Salzburg, Austria. josef.perner@sbg.ac.at
Kloo
Daniela
D
Rohwer
Michael
M
D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall / Q000502:physiology; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D009949:Orientation / Q000502:physiology; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology; D018187:Personal Construct Theory; D011340:Problem Solving / Q000502:physiology; D013998:Time Perception / Q000502:physiology