Temporal Memory Accuracy For Autobiographical Events Across Childhood

Abstract

There is relatively little research about how accurately children remember temporal (when) details associated with autobiographical events. This thesis is part of a large-scale study with a goal of providing legal practitioners information about children’s accuracy for several forensically-relevant temporal details (e.g., age during event, month, time of day), and tests whether accuracy is affected by age of the child and valence of the event. Parents nominated and provided timestamped documentation for a positive and negative event (occurring within the past two years). Children (N=121; 4-6-years-old, 7-9-year-olds, 10-12-year-olds,13-15-year-olds) then answered various temporal questions about the events. We found age-related improvements for total temporal accuracy (sum of scores across temporal judgments), age, season and month estimates, and higher accuracy for positive compared to negative events for some temporal judgments. These preliminary findings provide novel insight for memory researchers and legal practitioners and will help with understanding time estimates provided by children.