Children’s Binding of What-Where-When-Who in Episodic Memory: Identifying Oneself in the Past

Abstract

It is usually accepted that the binding of what, where, and when is a central component of young children’s and animals’ nonconceptual episodic abilities. We argue that additionally binding self-in-past (what-where-when-who) adds a crucial conceptual requirement, and we ask when it becomes possible and what its cognitive correlates are. In the central task, children aged 3.5 years to 6.5 years watched a light display on Day 1, with 2 lights coming on simultaneously or in 1 of 2 orders. This light display was filmed from 1 of 3 positions: with the camera behind the child, above the child, or facing the child. On Day 2, children watched 3 videos from the original angle, and each represented 1 of the 3 light configurations, with the child in the video occluded. Participants had to decide which occluded child they were and justify their choice by reference to the lights. Above-chance performance was evident after 4.5 years of age. In addition, all children received the following tasks: spatial perspective taking, seeing leads to knowing, modus tollens reasoning, and second-order theory of mind. With age and verbal ability partialed out, only second-order theory of mind correlated significantly with performance on the central task.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We are grateful to Mark Haggard for advice about statistical analyses and to the parents of the children for giving up their time.

FUNDING

This research was funded by grant RG58276 from the Leverhulme Trust (UK) to J. Russell (PI), C. Russell, and N. Clayton, to whom we are most grateful.

Notes

¹ For example, if 50% of the children selected the wrong video and if we assume that these children chose randomly from the three options, with a chance of 0.66 of being wrong, then we can estimate that approximately 25% of the whole group selected the correct video by chance (given that the chance of a correct guess, 0.33, is half of 0.66).

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by grant RG58276 from the Leverhulme Trust (UK) to J. Russell (PI), C. Russell, and N. Clayton, to whom we are most grateful.