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A “snapshot” of declarative memory: Differing
developmental trajectories in episodic and
autobiographical memory
Thanujeni Pathman
a b
, Zoe Samson
a
, Kevin Dugas
a
, Roberto Cabeza
c
& Patricia
J. Bauer
a
a
Department of Psychology, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA
b
Center for Mind and Brain, UC Davis, Davis, CA, USA
c
Center for Cognitive Neuroscience and Department of Psychology and
Neuroscience, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA
Version of record first published: 26 Sep 2011.
To cite this article: Thanujeni Pathman , Zoe Samson , Kevin Dugas , Roberto Cabeza & Patricia J. Bauer (2011): A
“snapshot” of declarative memory: Differing developmental trajectories in episodic and autobiographical memory,
Memory, 19:8, 825-835
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09658211.2011.613839
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A ‘‘snapshot’’ of declarative memory: Differing
developmental trajectories in episodic and
autobiographical memory
Thanujeni Pathman1,2
, Zoe Samson1
, Kevin Dugas1
, Roberto Cabeza3
and Patricia J. Bauer1
1
Department of Psychology, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA
2
Center for Mind and Brain, UC Davis, Davis, CA, USA
3
Center for Cognitive Neuroscience and Department of Psychology and Neuroscience,
Duke University, Durham, NC, USA
Episodic and autobiographical memory are clearly related, yet in both the adult and developmental
literatures it is difficult to compare them because of differences in how the constructs are assessed,
including differences in content, levels of control, and time since experience. To address these issues, we
directly compared children’s and adults’ autobiographical and episodic memory using the same
controlled paradigm. Participants engaged in a photo-taking activity in a museum (autobiographical
encoding) and viewed others’ photographs of the same museum exhibits (episodic encoding). At test,
participants classified photos as ones they took, viewed, or novel. In the autobiographical condition older
children and adults performed similarly; younger children’s performance was lower than adults’. In
contrast, in the episodic condition both groups of children performed more poorly than adults. The
findings suggest the developmental primacy of autobiographical relative to episodic memory, and that
traditional episodic tasks may underestimate older children’s declarative memory abilities.
Keywords: Autobiographical memory; Episodic memory; Memory development.
The capacity to remember past events is fundamental.
From significant events like weddings
and graduations, to more mundane events, like
where the car was parked this morning, the
capacity to remember is a central part of our
lives. This type of memory is episodic*it is for
events tied to a particular place and time (Tulving,
1984). Memories of events such as weddings
and graduations in particular, also may be
characterised as autobiographical because they
are personally relevant. Although episodic and
autobiographical memory are clearly closely
related, they are typically studied separately
(see Gilboa, 2004; McDermott, Szpunar, &
Christ, 2009). As a result, relations between
them, and their respective developmental trajectories,
are not well understood. The goal of the
present research was to address these issues by
bringing the literatures into closer alignment with
a paradigm that allowed for test of recognition of
both autobiographical and episodic memory in
both adults and children.
The relation between episodic and autobiographical
memory is a matter of debate (see Gilboa,
Address correspondence to: Thanujeni Pathman, Center for Mind and Brain, UC Davis, 267 Cousteau Place, Davis, California,
95618, USA. E-mail: tpathman@ucdavis.edu
The work was supported by Emory College of Arts and Sciences, Emory University. The authors also thank members of the
Memory at Emory laboratory for assistance at various stages of this research, as well as the participants and their families.
MEMORY, 2011, 19 (8), 825Á835
# 2011 Psychology Press, an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business
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2004). Some conceptualise episodic and autobiographical
memory as synonymous, both supporting
recollection of personally experienced
events and their contexts (e.g., Gardiner, 2001;
Kopelman & Kapur, 2001; Tulving, 1972). Others
view autobiographical memory as a distinct type
or subtype of episodic memory, specialised for
personally relevant events (e.g., Wheeler, Stuss, &
Tulving, 1997). Episodic and autobiographical
memory are also distinguished on a temporal
dimension, operating on short and longer time
scales, respectively (Conway, 2001; Conway &
Pleydell-Pearce, 2000). Yet another view is that
autobiographical memory is a mixture of episodic
and semantic memory (see Cabeza & St. Jacques,
2007). Disagreements about the constructs also
pervade the developmental literature in which the
major issue is whether autobiographical memory
makes a relatively early (e.g., Howe & Courage,
1993) or late (e.g., Perner, 2000) appearance in
childhood. Yet these differences too stem from
differing conceptualisations of the relation between
episodic and autobiographical memory (for
discussion see Bauer, 2007).
In spite of these controversies, progress has
been made in understanding both autobiographical
and episodic memory in both adults and in
development. By and large, however, the four
literatures do not inform one another. In both the
adult and developmental literatures, methodological
differences make comparison of findings
from studies of episodic and autobiographical
memory difficult at best. Typically, examinations
of episodic memory involve assessments of the
accuracy of recall or recognition of words, pictures,
or other controlled stimuli over relatively
short delays (e.g., Eldridge, Knowlton, Furmanski,
Bookheimer, & Engel, 2000; Henson, Rugg,
Shallice, & Dolan, 2000; Ofen et al., 2007). In
contrast, autobiographical memory is tested by
asking children (e.g., Bauer, Burch, Scholin, &
Gu¨ler, 2007; Fivush, Gray, & Fromhoff, 1987) or
adults (e.g., Rubin, Wetzler, & Nebes, 1986) to
recall events from their daily lives. Encoding
cannot be controlled, accuracy is difficult to
assess, and the delay between experience and
test may be months or years. The different
methodologies make it hazardous to compare
findings from studies of episodic and autobiographical
memory (see McDermott et al., 2009).
A paradigm introduced in the adult literature
allows for direct comparison between episodic
and autobiographical memory retrieval. In
Cabeza et al. (2004), adults photographed specified
locations around a university campus over a
10-day period. They were instructed,when taking
each photo, to mentally note physical (e.g., lighting,
temperature) and psychological (e.g., mood)
aspects, thus making the photo-taking experience
more personally relevant. Days later they viewed
and rated the aesthetic quality of photographs
taken by others of the same locations. At retrieval,
participants decided whether photos were
ones they took (autobiographical encoding condition),
photos that they saw and rated (episodic
encoding condition), or novel photos. Analysis of
corrected recognition scores (hits minus false
alarms) in each condition revealed no differences
in performance. However, condition differences
were apparent in neural activations as measured
by functional magnetic resonance imaging
(fMRI). Specifically, in both conditions there
were activations in the medial temporal lobe
and prefrontal cortex. In addition, in the autobiographical
encoding condition there was greater
activity in medial prefrontal cortex, visual and
parahippocampal areas, and hippocampus, areas
implicated in self-referential processing, visual or
spatial memory, and recollection, respectively.
In the present research we adapted the paradigm
introduced by Cabeza et al. (2004) to allow
direct comparison of behavioural recognition of
episodic and autobiographical memory in adults
and developing children. Bringing the adult and
developmental literatures into direct contact is
beneficial for two reasons. First, examining the
developmental trajectories of these two types of
memory can inform the relations between them.
For instance, differing developmental trajectories
would suggest theoretically significant differences
between the constructs. Second, description of the
developmental time course is not complete without
comparison to adult performance. There are
some direct comparisons of performance by
children and adults on episodic memory tasks in
which the same stimuli (e.g., line drawings) are
appropriate for children and adults (e.g., Cycowicz,
Friedman, Snodgrass, & Duff, 2001). There
are virtually no opportunities to directly compare
children and adults in autobiographical memory
tasks, because the events in which children and
adults engage are so different. Bringing the
literatures into closer alignment thus stands to
inform both.
We focused the research on two groups of
school-age children (7- to 9-year-olds and 9- to 11year-olds)
and adults. School-age children were
selected both because they were expected to be
826 PATHMAN ET AL.
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able to participate in the protocol and because
they are a relatively understudied age group.
Several studies have examined recall of specific
past events in preschool-age children (e.g., Fivush
et al., 1987; Hamond & Fivush, 1991; for reviews
see Bauer, 2007; Nelson & Fivush, 2004). In
contrast, there is little research on memory for
personal events beyond the preschool years. As
reviewed in Bauer et al. (2007), only a handful of
studies (e.g., Fivush & Schwarzmueller, 1998;
Sheingold & Tenney, 1982; Van Abbema &
Bauer, 2005) have examined autobiographical
memory in older school-aged children. The primary
focus of the studies has been older children’s
recall of events experienced years earlier.
As a result, we know little about changes in
autobiographical memory beyond the preschool
years. By directly comparing two groups of
children and adults we can make important
progress in understanding the developmental
trajectories of both episodic and autobiographical
memory.
To permit direct comparisons of memory under
episodic and autobiographical encoding conditions
and direct comparisons of children and
adults, 7- to 9-year-olds, 9- to 11-year-olds and
adults visited a museum and took photographs of
exhibits. As in Cabeza et al. (2004), they were
instructed to remember each photo-taking event
and mentally note the physical features of the
objects being photographed, lighting conditions,
and how they felt about what they were photographing.
The instructions created encoding conditions
akin to those for autobiographical
memory (autobiographical encoding). Participants
then viewed and judged the quality of
photographs of museum exhibits taken by someone
else, tasks akin to those used in tests of
episodic memory (episodic encoding). Later,
participants decided whether photographs were
ones they took themselves, photographs they
viewed, or novel photographs.
Overall, we expected adults to perform more
accurately than children. Based on the behavioural
results of Cabeza et al. (2004), we expected
adults to have comparable performance in the
autobiographical and episodic encoding conditions.
For children, expectations regarding relative
levels of performance in the autobiographical
and episodic encoding conditions were less obvious.
One could reasonably argue that performance
in the autobiographical encoding condition
would be higher than in the episodic encoding
condition, based on the assumption that increased
self-involvement and reflection on the photograph
taking experience would allow for more
robust encoding and efficient retrieval. Alternatively
it is equally logical to predict that performance
in the autobiographical encoding condition
would be lower than in the episodic encoding
condition, given that several of the conceptual
domains associated with autobiographical memory
undergo protracted development (e.g., self
concept, understanding of temporal dimensions,
source memory; e.g., Bauer, 2007; Nelson &
Fivush, 2004). The third possibility*comparable
levels of performance in the two conditions*
could reasonably be expected as well, based
on the pattern observed among adults in Cabaza
et al.
METHOD
Participants
A total of 17 children 7Á9 years old (10 girls;
M07.70, range 07.17Á8.83), 18 9- to 11-yearolds
(6 girls; M010.37, range 09.25Á11.83), and
20 adults (15 women; M020.12, range 018.50Á
26.75) participated. Children were recruited from
a volunteer pool; adults were recruited from an
undergraduate student subject pool. Of these
participants, 80% were Caucasians. One additional
child was excluded because of computer
malfunction. Adults gave informed consent to
participate; parents gave consent for their children
and children gave assent. The protocol was
approved by the university Institutional Review
Board. Children received a toy and $10 gift
certificate; adults received course credit.
Stimuli
Stimuli were photographs of objects and exhibits
at the Fernbank Museum of Natural History,
Atlanta, Georgia. Constraints were that the subjects
of the photographs were (a) indoors, (b) not
behind highly reflective surfaces, and (c) stationary.
For the episodic and autobiographical encoding
conditions, an additional constraint was that
the subjects of the photographs were in permanent
museum collections. Within these constraints, for
use in the episodic encoding condition, we photographed
10 objects in each of six categories: (a)
fish and shells, (b) dinosaurs or fossils, (c) contemporary
animals, (d) characters, (e) signs, and
DEVELOPMENTAL TRAJECTORIES 827
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(f) architectural features. For the novel photograph
set we took an additional 30 photographs of
exhibits or objects that participants would not
view. All photographs were taken using the same
camera and settings participants would use. The
stimuli for the autobiographical encoding condition
were taken by the participants themselves
(see Procedure). Example photographs are provided
in Figure 1.
Procedure
Following the procedure in Cabeza et al. (2004),
the study involved three sequential parts: autobiographical
event encoding, episodic event encoding,
and test for recognition. To make the
paradigm child-friendly some procedural departures
from Cabeza et al. were made. First, in
Cabeza et al. photographs were taken over 10
days and episodic encoding occurred 1Á3 days
later. In the present study all photographs were
taken and viewed in one day because (a) it would
be unreasonable to ask participants to visit the
museum location over a 10-day period, and (b) it
reduced the likelihood that participants would use
familiarity or recency as a basis for distinguishing
photographs encoded in the autobiographical and
episodic conditions (thus eliminating a potential
confound in Cabeza et al.). In addition we chose a
museum as the site (versus a university campus)
to equalise familiarity of the location for the two
groups. Finally, whereas in Cabeza et al. the novel
items were unfamiliar photographs of familiar
locations, in the present study the novel photographs
were of novel locations in the museum.
At the first session participants met one of six
experimenters at the museum. Following a script,
the experimenters explained to the participant
that s/he would be taking photographs and that s/
he should try to remember them because they
would later be tested on their memory for the
photographs they took (verbatim instructions are
available from the first and last authors). The
experimenter then described how to operate the
digital camera. Participants were instructed (a)
not to use the zoom functions, but instead to
physically move closer or further away from the
object to obtain the effect they desired; (b) to
take only horizontal (landscape-format) photographs;
and (c) to avoid photographing people.
These restrictions were imposed to increase
participants’ engagement in the picture-taking
event, to ensure consistency among photographs,
and to avoid cues as to the source of
the photograph (e.g., a family members in a
Figure 1. Photographs taken by participants during autobiographical encoding. Example photographs were taken by 7-year-olds
(photos on left) and adults (photos on right) for a specified location in the ‘‘architectural features’’ category (top) and ‘‘dinosaurs or
fossils’’ category (bottom). Photographs shown here converted from colour to greyscale for publication.
828 PATHMAN ET AL.
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photograph would signal that it was taken by the
participant), respectively.
Autobiographical encoding condition. Experimenters
accompanied participants throughout the
museum and made certain they did not review the
photographs through the viewfinder after they
were taken. Participants were instructed to place
themselves in the picture-taking event by thinking
about how they felt about each object or exhibit,
how they would photograph the object or exhibit,
the lighting conditions, and so forth. Participants
photographed 30 objects or exhibits specified by
the experimenter (specified condition) and 30
objects or exhibits of their choice (choice condition).
In each condition the photographs were of
five objects or exhibits from each of the six
categories listed above. An additional constraint
on the choice photographs was that they could not
be the same subjects photographed in the specified
condition. The choice manipulation was
intended to further increase the autobiographical
nature of the picture-taking event by allowing
personal selection of subject matter. However,
the manipulation did not affect performance in
the autobiographical condition and thus will not
be discussed further (analyses are available from
the first and last authors). Participants took three
photographs of each object or exhibit to ensure an
optimal photo for test (see below; e.g., not
obscured by the participant’s finger; non-optimal
photographs were rare). All participants took the
photographs in the same order.
Episodic encoding condition. After taking the
photographs in the autobiographical encoding
condition, participants sat at a table in a quiet
area of the museum and on a laptop computer
viewed 60 photographs of museum exhibits that
had been taken by someone else; photographs
were viewed in the same random order by all
participants. Each photo remained on the screen
for 10 seconds (as in Cabeza et al., 2004). The
exposure duration approximated the time required
to take three photographs of each object/
exhibit in the autobiographical encoding condition.
As in Cabeza et al., participants rated each
photograph’s aesthetic quality. We used a 3-point
(1 0‘‘bad picture’’; 3 0‘‘really good picture’’)
rather than a 5-point, Likert-type scale to accommodate
children. Participants were explicitly told
that they would later be tested on their memory
of the photographs they viewed.
Recognition test1
. One to two days later
(M01.4 days), participants visited the laboratory
and viewed the 60 photographs they had taken,
the 60 photographs viewed on the laptop, and 30
novel photographs. Participants viewed photographs
in the same pseudo-random order with
the constraint that no more than three photographs
of the same trial type occurred in a row.
Each photograph was presented for 6 seconds
with a 3-second black-screen ITI. Participants
pressed different buttons for photographs they
‘‘remember taking’’, ‘‘viewed on the laptop’’, and
‘‘were new’’. To promote accuracy and encourage
attention towards the recollective experience, the
instructions emphasised accuracy over speed (as
in Cabeza et al., 2004).
RESULTS
To accommodate the two types of ‘‘old’’ stimuli
we adapted the traditional classification of hits,
false alarms, misses, and correct rejections. As
reflected in Table 1 (Panel a), autobiographical
hits (HA) were photographs correctly classified as
taken by the participant; episodic hits (HE) were
photographs correctly classified as having been
seen on the laptop; correct rejections (CRN) were
photographs correctly classified as novel. Two
types of false alarms were possible: incorrect
classification of a novel photograph as autobiographical
(FAN*A) or episodic (FAN*E). Two
types of misses also were possible: incorrect
classification of an autobiographical or episodic
photo as novel (MA*N or ME*N, respectively).
Further, participants could make two types of
encoding condition errors or source slips: classify
a photo that they took as one that they saw on the
laptop (SSA*E), or vice versa (SSE*A). Observed
means and standard deviations are in Table 1
1
Of the 35 children, 15 participated in an ERP (eventrelated
potential) procedure during the recognition test. In
addition, during encoding of the episodic encoding condition
these participants were asked to rate how a professional
photographer would rate the photograph instead of how the
participant her/himself would rate the photograph. The results
reported do not differ when this subgroup of children is
analysed separately (details are available from the first and
last authors). Thus the different procedures will not be
discussed further.
DEVELOPMENTAL TRAJECTORIES 829
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(Panel b). Because there were no significant
effects associated with the length of the delay
between encoding and the recognition test (range
1Á2 days), the values reflect the means regardless
of delay.
Corrected recognition scores were calculated by
subtracting the proportion of false alarms from
the proportion of hits (as in Cabeza et al., 2004)
for the autobiographical (HA minus FAN*A) and
episodic (HE minus FAN*E) conditions. The group
means (and standard deviations) of corrected
recognition scores for younger children, older
children, and adults were .733 (.117), .776 (.115),
and .867 (.131), respectively, in the autobiographical
encoding condition; and .357 (.266), .502
(.193), and .712 (.148), respectively, in the episodic
encoding condition (Figure 2). A 3 (age:
younger children, older children, adults))2 (condition:
autobiographical, episodic) mixed analysis
of variance (condition is within-participants) revealed
main effects of Age, F(2, 52) 014.31,
p B.0001, h2
0.18, and Condition, F(1, 52) 0
114.88, p B.0001, h2
0.31. Tukey’s Studentised
Range Tests revealed that, overall, adults’ corrected
recognition scores were higher than both
younger and older children’s scores, and overall,
scores in the autobiographical condition were
higher than in the episodic condition.
These main effects were qualified by an Age
Group)Condition interaction, F(2, 52) 06.62,
p B.003, h2
0.04. Analysis of this interaction revealed
that for all three age groups, performance
in the autobiographical encoding condition was
greater than in the episodic encoding condition.
The source of the interaction was revealed in
analyses by condition. There were age group
differences in both the autobiographical and
episodic encoding conditions: F(2, 52) 05.86, pB
.006, h2
0.18, and F(2, 52) 014.16, p B.0001,
h2
0.35, respectively. Follow-up Tukey tests revealed
that in the autobiographical encoding
condition, adults’ scores were higher than younger
children’s scores; there was no difference
between scores of older children and adults or
older children and younger children. In the
episodic encoding condition adults’ scores were
higher than both groups of children; there was no
difference between the scores of the younger and
older children. Thus different developmental
trajectories were apparent for recognition performance
in the autobiographical and episodic
encoding conditions (Figure 2). It is unlikely
that ceiling effects can explain the different
developmental trajectories for each encoding
task. Although performance in the autobiographical
condition was high, the older child group
was not at ceiling yet exhibited different relative
TABLE 1
Response classifications and descriptive statistics of performance in each age group
Trial
Response classifications Old New
Panel a Autobiographical Episodic
Participant response Old Autobiographical Hit (HA) Source slip (SSE*A) False Alarm (FAN*A)
Episodic Source slip (SSA*E) Hit (HE) False Alarm (FAN*E)
New Novel Miss (MA*N) Miss (ME*N) Correct Rejection (CRN)
Trial
Old New
Panel b Autobiographical Episodic
Younger children (N017)
Participant response Old Autobiographical .773 (.08) .248 (.14) .039 (.07)
Episodic .074 (.04) .427 (.23) .071 (.08)
New Novel .121 (.10) .283 (.19) .841 (.17)
Older children (N018)
Participant response Old Autobiographical .789 (.10) .205 (.09) .013 (.03)
Episodic .104 (.06) .619 (.15) .117 (.16)
New Novel .087 (.09) .163 (.12) .856 (.16)
Adults (N020)
Participant response Old Autobiographical .870 (.13) .127 (.08) .003 (.01)
Episodic .073 (.07) .740 (.14) .028 (.06)
New Novel .032 (.03) .133 (.13) .968 (.08)
830 PATHMAN ET AL.
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patterns of performance as a function of encoding
condition.
Next we examined the proportion of source
slips in the autobiographical and episodic encoding
conditions. Source slips are errors in which the
participant correctly classified a photograph as
old, but misattributed the encoding condition
associated with the photograph. Levels of performance
for each age group and condition are
depicted in Figure 3. Consistent with the analyses
of corrected recognition scores, there were suggestions
of the primacy of development of autobiographical
relative to episodic memory.
Specifically, a 3 (age: younger children, older
children, adults))2 (condition: autobiographical,
episodic) mixed analysis of variance revealed
main effects of Age, F(2, 52) 04.65, p B.02,
h2
0.07, and Condition, F(1, 52) 054.46,
p B.0001, h2
0.26, which were qualified by their
interaction, F(2, 52) 05.64, p B.007, h2
0.05.
Overall, adults made fewer source slips than
both groups of children, and fewer source slips
were made in the autobiographical than the
episodic condition. To examine the interaction
we conducted separate ANOVAs for each encoding
condition. In the episodic encoding condition,
relative to adults, younger children more often
erroneously identified a photograph taken
by another as one they had taken themselves
(see Figure 3), F(2, 52) 06.14, pB.005, h2
0.19
(Tukey’s Studentised HSD used as follow-up).
The number of source slips did not differ between
Figure 3. Source slips for each condition and age group.
Figure 2. Corrected recognition score for each condition and age group. Corrected recognition score is equal to hits minus false
alarms for each condition.
DEVELOPMENTAL TRAJECTORIES 831
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younger children and older children, or between
older children and adults. In contrast, in the
autobiographical encoding condition there was
no effect of age (F01.54, p0.23). In other words,
children were no more likely than adults to
erroneously classify a photograph they had taken
as one that they had seen on the laptop.
DISCUSSION
In the present research we compared performance
by two groups of school-aged children
and adults in the same controlled paradigm,
under episodic and autobiographical encoding
conditions. To our knowledge this is the first
such study in the literature. We delineated differing
developmental trajectories in each encoding
condition. As assessed in this paradigm, younger
children (7- to 9-year-olds) did not show adultlike
performance in either autobiographical or
episodic memory. In contrast, older (9- to 11-yearold)
children’s performance was adult-like for
autobiographical but not episodic memory.
These results have several implications for
both the adult and developmental memory literatures.
First, the finding that 9- to 11-year-old
children and adults performed similarly in the
autobiographical encoding condition suggests that
traditional episodic memory paradigms may underestimate
older children’s memory abilities.
Second, the fact that older children’s recognition
accuracy was similar to adults in the autobiographical
encoding condition, but not the episodic
encoding condition, suggests that autobiographical
memory has primacy in development relative
to episodic memory. Primacy may result from the
greater self-relevance or self-reflective nature of
autobiographical events, rendering them more
meaningful and consequently, more memorable.
However, this contradicts a common view in the
developmental literature that autobiographical
memory is later-developing, because many of
the cognitive abilities on which it depends (e.g.,
self, concepts of time) are themselves later to
develop (see Nelson & Fivush, 2004). Third, the
differing developmental trajectories of performance
in autobiographical and episodic encoding
conditions reported in the present study suggest
theoretically significant differences between autobiographical
and episodic memory tasks and
constructs.
The present study suggests different developmental
trajectories for episodic and autobiographical
memory, and that autobiographical
memory may outpace its less personally relevant
episodic counterpart. Yet the work provides only
a ‘‘snapshot’’ into the development of declarative
memory. Additional work is needed to determine
whether there truly are dissociable developmental
trajectories, and the precise relations between
them. Alternatively, it is possible that the ‘‘snapshot’’
reflects differences in the strength of the
representations assessed in the episodic and
autobiographical conditions. Neuroimaging data
from the earlier analogue of this paradigm
indicated that autobiographical encoding engaged
more self-referential processing and visual/spatial
memory than episodic encoding (see Cabeza
et al., 2004). This might have resulted in quantitatively
‘‘richer’’ memory representations on
which participants could draw, thus supporting
similar performance by older children and adults.
Older children might have performed more
poorly than adults in the episodic encoding
condition because their less mature memory
systems could not compensate for the ‘‘poorer’’
(i.e., weaker) memory representations. Further
research is necessary to differentiate between
these possibilities. The paradigm used in this
research is ideally suited to the task because it
would permit manipulations of the parameters of
support in each encoding condition (e.g., more
encoding time, deeper processing, etc.).
Despite the fact that autobiographical recognition
memory in older school-aged children resembled
that of adults, we reported ways in which,
overall, children’s memory performance was
poorer than adults. Compared to children, when
adults remembered an event as ‘‘old’’ they more
often matched the event to its corresponding
encoding condition. This finding is consistent
with work done on source memory using traditional
episodic tasks in which children have
difficulty determining the source of studied items
(e.g., Cycowicz et al., 2001). Yet the situations are
different. In studies on source memory participants
are typically required to provide a specific
type of spatial, temporal, or social contextual
information from the encoding experience (see
Johnson, Hashtroudi & Lindsay, 1993). For example,
at retrieval participants may be asked to
judge the colour of ink in which a word was
presented at study, or judge whether a female or
male voice read a sentence at study. In the present
investigation, however, participants were not
required to make judgements about one particular
type of contextual information associated with
832 PATHMAN ET AL.
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an event. Instead, multiple contextual cues were
available for participants to retrieve in order to
reconstruct the encoding experience. Thus,
although the findings of the present research are
consistent with findings on the development of
memory for source, the questions are different.
The results of the present study are also
consistent with the self-reference effect reported
in the adult cognitive psychology literature. In
self-reference effect, studied items that are judged
in relation to the self (e.g., ‘‘does this word
describe you?’’) are remembered better than
studied items judged in relation to another person
(e.g., ‘‘does this word describe person X?’’) or are
remembered better than items processed semantically
(for review see Symons & Johnson, 1997).
This effect is similar to our findings in
which, across age groups, photographs that were
encoded with increased self-involvement (participant
asked to take the photograph, and think
about how s/he feels about the photographed
exhibit etc.) were remembered better than photographs
that participants viewed on a computer
and judged for aesthetic quality (less self-referential
processing). At the same time, this finding
may be related to a phenomenon termed the
generation effect (Slamecka & Graf, 1978): adults
better recall or recognise words that they generated
themselves (e.g., antonyms) compared to
words that they read. In the present study, stimuli
generated by the participant were their own
photographs. It is possible that some of the
same mechanisms that help to enhance memory
for self-generated words and sentences in studies
of the generation effect also help to enhance
memory for other self-generated stimuli such as
photographs.
Observations of differences in performance by
adults and school-age children may seem curious
in light of abundant evidence that even preschoolers
recall past events. Yet preschoolers’ recall is
but an early step along the long road of development
of episodic and autobiographical memory
(e.g., Bauer, 2007). An important rate-limiting
variable in development is the neural substrate
that supports these memory functions. Well into
adolescence there are gradual increases in hippocampal
volume (Gogtay et al., 2004; Pfluger et al.,
1999) and myelination in the hippocampal region
(Arnold & Trojanowski, 1996; Schneider, Il’yasov,
Hennig & Martin, 2004). In prefrontal cortex,
throughout adolescence there are changes in
the number of synapses (Huttenlocher, 1979), in
grey matter volume, and in myelination and
connectivity between brain regions (Johnson,
1997; Klingberg, Vaidya, Gabrielli, Soseley, &
Hedehus, 1999; Schneider et al., 2004). The
connections between hippocampus and frontal
structures are not fully forged until late in
development (e.g., Fuster 2002). The protracted
development of the neural structures and networks
known to be involved in episodic and
autobiographical memory no doubt has functional
consequences (e.g., Ofen et al., 2007). It may help
explain why the younger school-aged children
tested in the present research differed from adults
in our assessments of both autobiographical and
episodic memory, and why within childhood there
were age-related differences in performance.
These findings highlight the importance of comparisons
not only of levels of performance of
children of different ages, but also of children
with adults.
Continued progress in understanding episodic
and autobiographical memory, the relations between
them, and their respective developmental
trajectories, will be aided by address of two
limitations of the present research. The first is
that although taking a photograph may be more
self-relevant and ‘‘autobiographical’’ than viewing
a photograph taken by another, it is not as
personally meaningful as many of the events that
make up our autobiographies. Moreover, several
features of autobiographical memory (e.g., emotion,
vividness; see Cabeza & St. Jacques, 2007)
were minimal or absent in this paradigm. Even as
some conceptually significant differences between
autobiographical and episodic encoding conditions
were minimised in the present research,
other potentially confounding differences between
the conditions were present. In the autobiographical
condition encoding of items involved
(a) active participation in the environment, (b)
transitions between rooms and contexts, and (c)
temporal spacing between events. In contrast, in
the episodic encoding condition, encoding of
items involved (a) viewing on a computer screen,
(b) sitting in one location, and (c) minimal
spacing between events. On the one hand, some
or all of these differences may be found to explain
significant variance in performance in the different
conditions. On the other hand, that is precisely
the point: episodes that become
autobiographical are encoded differently from
episodes that do not. Nevertheless, in future
research it would be desirable to vary each of
these factors and isolate those that contribute to
DEVELOPMENTAL TRAJECTORIES 833
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differential patterns of memory such as reported
here.
The second limitation of the present research is
that participants received explicit instructions to
remember, and the task orders were the same for
all participants. How the instructions impacted
performance, and whether adults and children
used different strategies to remember, cannot be
assessed in the present research. Nor can the
effects of the fixed order of experience be
assessed. These conditions must be taken into
account in evaluating the present research, and
their impact should be examined in future re-
search.
In conclusion, we directly compared children
and adults in two mnemonic domains (autobiographical
and episodic memory) using the same
controlled paradigm, with the result that four
separate literatures were brought into closer
alignment. The work not only provides a rare
‘‘snapshot’’ of the relative levels of development
of episodic and autobiographical memory, but
also lays the groundwork for further research with
a productive paradigm. For example, more finegrained
analysis of age-related changes throughout
childhood could fruitfully be examined,
especially given the evidence reported here that
older school-aged children differ from younger
school-aged children in recognition of the context
of encoding. Future work may focus on the
development of the underlying neural substrates
involved in declarative memory. As noted by
Cycowicz (2000), neuroimaging methods, like
event-related potentials (ERP), are beneficial
because they can be used across the lifespan.
The paradigm used in this investigation could
easily be combined with neuroimaging to study
the development of the underlying neural substrates
and processes involved in autobiographical
and episodic memory.
Manuscript received 12 August 2010
Manuscript accepted 18 July 2011
First published online 26 September 2011
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