Children’s Memory for Temporal Information: The Roles of Temporal Language and Executive Function

Abstract

The ability to recall the temporal order of events develops much more slowly than the ability to recall facts about events. To explore what processes facilitate memory for temporal information, we tested 3- to 6-year-old children (N = 40) for immediate memory of the temporal order of events from a storybook, using a visual timeline task and a yes/no recognition task. In addition, children completed tasks assessing their understanding of before and after and the executive functions of inhibition using the Day/Night Stroop task and cognitive shifting using the Dimensional Change Card Sort (DCCS) task. Older children (Mage = 69.25 months) outperformed younger children (Mage = 52.35 months) on all measures; however, the only significant predictor of memory for the temporal ordering of events was cognitive shifting. The findings suggest that the difficulty in memory for temporal information is related to development of a general cognitive ability, as indexed by the DCCS, rather than specific temporal abilities.

Keywords:

• Event memory
• executive functions
• preschool children
• temporal knowledge
• temporal memory

Acknowledgements

E. Albright completed this work at Colby College with financial support from the Bowdoin College Peter Buck Grant. The authors thank M. Alvarez- Backus, S. Boland, C. El-Abboud, and A. Rudinski for pilot testing one or more tasks, and A. Arterberry, T. Cimenian, and Y. Wang for help with testing and/or reliability coding.

Disclosure statement

We declare no conflict of interests or financial benefits.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Martha E. Arterberry

Martha E. Arterberry is Professor of Psychology at Colby College, Maine. She received her B.A. from Pomona College and her Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. She previously was Professor of Psychology at Gettysburg College, Pennsylvania, and she was a collaborative investigator at the Child and Family Research Section of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development from 1998 to 2019. Arterberry is coauthor of Development in Infancy: A Contemporary Introduction (5^th Edition) and Development of Perception in Infancy: The Cradle of Knowledge Revisited, and she is the Editor-in-Chief of Infant Behavior and Development. Her research interests in perceptual and cognitive development include depth perception, three-dimensional object perception, perception and action, categorization, and memory.

Eliana J. Albright

Eliana J. Albright is a student at Bowdoin College with an expected graduation date of May 2020. She is majoring in Psychology and Sociology.