Autobiographical memory specificity among preschool-aged children.

Developmental Psychology 2014, Vol. 50, No. 7, 1963–1972

© 2014 American Psychological Association 0012-1649/14/$12.00 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0036988

Autobiographical Memory Specificity Among Preschool-Aged Children Amy K. Nuttall, Kristin Valentino, Michelle Comas, Anne T. McNeill, and Paul C. Stey

This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.

University of Notre Dame Overgeneral memory refers to difficulty retrieving specific autobiographical memories and is consistently associated with depression and/or trauma. The present study developed a downward extension of the Autobiographical Memory Test (AMT; Williams & Broadbent, 1986) given the need to document normative developmental changes in ability to retrieve specific memories among preschoolers. Confirmatory factor analysis and item response theory demonstrated that the AMT-Preschool Version maintained the same underlying 1-factor structure as the original. Additionally, the present study determined that child age was associated with increased specificity. Inhibitory control was evaluated as a potential mediator. Although age was related to inhibition, inhibition was unrelated to memory specificity. This finding adds to research suggesting that behavioral inhibition is unrelated to overgeneral memory among youth. Keywords: autobiographical memory, inhibitory control, executive functioning, preschool aged children

histories (e.g., Johnson, Greenhoot, Glisky, & McCloskey, 2005; Kuyken, Howell, & Dalgleish, 2006; Valentino, Bridgett, Hayden, & Nuttall, 2012; Valentino, Toth, & Cicchetti, 2009). Little research, however, has addressed children’s ability to retrieve specific autobiographical memories, or conversely OGM, among typically developing samples of children, and specificity versus OGM has yet to be examined during the preschool-aged period. As such, there is no normative framework of research on the development of the ability to retrieve specific memories against which research on OGM with atypically developing samples, such as depressed or traumatized children, may be compared. In order to better interpret past research with clinical samples of children, it is necessary to elucidate normative developmental pathways of autobiographical memory specificity (Valentino, 2011). OGM is traditionally assessed through generative retrieval paradigms in which individuals are asked to recall specific memories associated with a series of emotion cue words. Thus, although there has been extensive developmental research on the emergence of autobiographical memory (for reviews, see Fivush, 2011; Howe, Toth, & Cicchetti, 2006), to our knowledge no research has used an independent generative retrieval task to assess emotional autobiographical memory specificity with young children. Instead, autobiographical memory among young children has typically been examined using reminiscing paradigms in which the parent selects a memory to be discussed and the discussion is then either scaffolded by the parent or unscaffolded by an experimenter, and analysis is often on the number of details or amount of unique information children provide rather than whether or not they can generate and retrieve specific memories (e.g., Fivush, Haden, & Reese, 2006; Nelson & Fivush, 2004; Reese, Haden, & Fivush, 1993; Reese & Newcombe, 2007). As such, the purpose of the present study was to examine how children’s autobiographical memory specificity differed with age among a sample of typically developing preschool-aged children. In order to do this, in the present study, we first developed a comparable emotion cue word generative retrieval autobiographical memory task to be appropriate for preschoolers. Subsequently, the goals of this study were to

Autobiographical memory refers to declarative memory for personally experienced events (Bauer, Larkina, & Deocampo, 2011). Autobiographical memory is important because memories of past events influence current and future behavior as well as the development of self-relevance and self-concept (Bauer et al., 2011). Specific autobiographical memories are self-referent memories that are of a single past event that occurred at a specific time. In contrast, overgeneral autobiographical memory (OGM) refers to the robust phenomenon of difficulty retrieving specific autobiographical memories. Instead of referring to specific past events, overgeneral memories typically include categorical memories of recurrent events or memories of extended periods of time (Williams et al., 2007). OGM is of particular importance because OGM is consistently associated with depression and/or a history of trauma and appears to be related to the onset and course of depression (for a review, see Valentino, 2011). The vast majority of research on OGM has focused on adult populations (Moore & Zoellner, 2007; Sumner, 2012). With recent increased interest in understanding the etiology of OGM, a small but growing literature has focused on overgenerality among samples of children, as an understanding of OGM among children may provide further insights into the origin of and mechanisms relating to OGM and psychopathology. To date, the child and adolescent OGM literature has predominantly focused on clinical and community samples of children with depressive symptoms or trauma

This article was published Online First May 19, 2014. Amy K. Nuttall, Kristin Valentino, Michelle Comas, Anne T. McNeill, and Paul C. Stey, Department of Psychology, University of Notre Dame. Anne T. McNeill is now at the Department of Psychology, Roosevelt University, Chicago, IL. This research was supported in part by the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts, University of Notre Dame. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Amy K. Nuttall, Department of Psychology, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556. E-mail: [email protected] 1963


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NUTTALL, VALENTINO, COMAS, MCNEILL, AND STEY

better understand how age relates to the ability to recall specific autobiographical memories among preschool-aged children and to test one mechanism that may help explain age-related differences in autobiographical memory specificity. The functional avoidance hypothesis, an early etiological model of OGM (Williams, 1996), argued that retrieval of autobiographical memory occurs as a top-down process where memory becomes truncated at a general level as a means of regulating negative affect and painful memories. This theory builds on the work of Nelson and Grundel (1981), which theorized that children first represent and retrieve events generically. As such, Williams’ (1996) etiological model included a developmental component as children’s representations and retrieval of autobiographical memories were believed to start at a general level and, with development, become more specific. Williams (1996) further argued that trauma in childhood could result in a developmental arrest whereby children, who were being negatively reinforced for avoiding painful memories by stopping the retrieval of memories at a general level, would be halted in the normative developmental progression toward greater memory specificity. However, there is competing theory and evidence for whether accessing specific memories should become easier or more difficult across development. For example, other developmental theories of memory suggest that autobiographical memory development begins as specific, verbatim representations and later gives way to more general, gistlike representations (e.g., Brainerd & Reyna, 2005; Howe, 2000; Mandler, 2004); in contrast to Williams (1996), such work would likely predict that development would make specific retrieval more difficult. More recently, Williams and colleagues (2007) proposed an updated model. The Capture and Rumination, Functional Avoidance and Executive Function (CaR-FA-X) model of OGM proposes three mechanisms related to OGM: capture and rumination processes, with retrieval activating ruminative thinking; functional avoidance; and impaired executive functioning ability, which hinders specific retrieval because of difficulties with goal-directed action and inhibition of irrelevant information during the memory search (Williams et al., 2007). The CaR-FA-X model does not include William’s earlier hypothesis about developmental arrest, but seems to predict that age would relate to OGM in a similar manner because of the role of executive functioning, in particular, which improves with age. Inconsistent findings regarding age and memory specificity in clinical and community samples of children have been reported in the OGM literature. For example, in a sample of maltreated and nonmaltreated 7- to 13-year-olds, younger children recalled more OGM than older children (Valentino et al., 2009). However, the opposite relationship between age and OGM was observed in a sample of 12- to 18-year-olds exposed to domestic violence (Johnson et al., 2005). Discrepant findings are likely explained by inconsistent methodologies for testing autobiographical memory in childhood. Valentino and colleagues (2009) used the autobiographical memory task (AMT; Williams & Broadbent, 1986), the most widely used cue-elicited paradigm (Griffith, Sumner, et al., 2012) that entails administration of 10 emotional words, five of positive valence and five of negative valence, and asks individuals to recall a specific time that they experienced each emotion. Johnson and colleagues (2005) administered an autobiographical memory task that also asked adolescents to generate specific

memories following positive, neutral, or negative cue words; however, this paradigm required youth to recall memories that occurred prior to age 9 (Crovitz, Harvey, & McKee, 1980), and such a task may have provided younger adolescents with a performance advantage as they were being asked to recall more recent memories than older youth. More broadly, children’s autobiographical memory has been shown to improve significantly across the preschool years in the context of mother– child reminiscing (Fivush, 2011; Fivush et al., 2006). For example, between 40 and 70 months of age, children are able to contribute more unique and detailed memory information and to make fewer off-topic comments during past-event conversations (Reese et al., 1993). It is important to note, however, that in the context of mother– child reminiscing, the event is selected for the child and the discussion is scaffolded by the parent, whereas studies of overgeneral memory require independent generative retrieval of specific memories. As such, further work is necessary to draw conclusions about the relationship between age and autobiographical memory specificity. Moreover, understanding the typical development of autobiographical memory specificity also requires examination of OGM in younger children. OGM, however, has yet to be studied in preschool-aged children due to limitations in the appropriateness of the vocabulary required by the primary cue paradigm testing memory specificity. Although the widely used AMT has been used to assess autobiographical memory specificity among children as young as age 7 (Valentino et al., 2009; Valentino et al., 2012), it is not developmentally appropriate for preschool-aged children mainly because of the cue-word vocabulary (i.e., successful). Work has attempted to circumvent this issue by using generative retrieval tasks with picture cues for children as young as age 6 (Bauer, Burch, Scholin, & Guler, 2007; Fitzgerald, 1991). However, further work is necessary to develop a test of autobiographical memory consistent with Williams and Broadbent’s (1986) paradigm for younger children as this paradigm remains the gold standard paradigm for assessing autobiographical memory at later stages of development (Griffith, Sumner, et al., 2012) and as it is expected that, if the vocabulary were appropriate, typically developing preschool children could perform such a generative retrieval task (Fivush & Nelson, 2004). In addition to delineating the association between age and memory specificity, it is also necessary to begin understanding the mechanisms that may account for age-related changes in memory specificity. Executive functioning is theorized to have a significant supporting role in both typical and atypical autobiographical memory (Conway & Pleydell-Pearce, 2000; Fivush & Nelson, 2004; Williams et al., 2007). Executive functioning refers to higher order cognitive processes that allow individuals to engage in goaloriented behavior and typically includes three primary subcomponents: inhibition, attention shifting, and updating/monitoring information into working memory (Miyake et al., 2000). Research examining components of executive functioning in preschoolers has supported a unidimensional construct of executive functioning during preschool (Fuhs & Day, 2011; Wiebe, Espy, & Charak, 2008). Developmental researchers have emphasized the role of supervisory executive processes in contributing to typical autobiographical memory development (Conway & Pleydell-Pearce, 2000), as do theories of OGM (Dalgleish et al., 2007; Williams et al., 2007). For example, the CaR-FA-X model (Williams et al.,


AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MEMORY SPECIFICITY IN PRESCHOOL

2007) argues, in part, that deficits in executive functioning affect working memory and the ability to inhibit irrelevant information, key components of generative memory retrieval. However, extant research examining associations between executive functioning and OGM are equivocal. In a community sample of children ages 9 –13, lower levels of self-reported inhibitory control were associated with OGM (Raes, Verstraeten, Bijttebier, Vasey, & Dalgleish, 2010). In contrast, inhibition as measured with a standardized neuropsychological test was not found to be associated with OGM in a clinical inpatient sample of 7- to 17-year-olds (Valentino et al., 2012). Therefore, further examination of the role of inhibition is needed in order to understand the role of inhibition in OGM, particularly with regards to younger and typically developing children as executive functioning abilities have been shown to improve during preschool (Fuhs & Day, 2011). In the present study, we sought to examine autobiographical memory specificity across the preschool-aged period. In order to do this, we developed a downward extension of the original AMT (Williams & Broadbent, 1986) to be appropriate for preschoolers. We then sought to confirm that it had the same underlying onefactor structure as previously established with the adult AMT in both clinical and nonclinical populations (Griffith, Kleim, Sumner, & Ehlers, 2012; Griffith et al., 2009). In addition to investigating the factor analytic structure of these items, we further investigated their properties from the perspective of item response theory (IRT; Lord & Novick, 1968) in order to further compare the AMT Preschool Version (AMT-PV) with studies of the psychometrics of the adult AMT (Griffith, Kleim, et al., 2012; Griffith et al., 2009). Second, we examined the age-related differences in children’s independent autobiographical memory retrieval, hypothesizing that autobiographical memory specificity would be positively associated with age. Third, we examined in the present study how executive control mechanisms influence specificity. To this effect, inhibitory control was evaluated as a potential mediator between child age and OGM in order to test the executive functioning portion of the CaR-FA-X etiological model of autobiographical memory specificity in a preschool sample.

Method A diverse community sample of 227 typically developing children between the ages of 4 and 6 (see Table 1) were used in the present study. Children were recruited through advertisements at local preschools, including Head Start and university preschool classes, libraries, businesses, and community centers. Attempts were made to evenly enroll 4-, 5-, and 6-year-olds with an even gender breakdown within each age range. The final sample consisted of 79 (35%) 4-year-olds (51.9% male and 48.1% female) with a mean age of 4.52 (SD ⫽ 0.27), 63 (32%) 5-year-olds (56.2% male and 43.8% female) with a mean age of 5.49 (SD ⫽ 0.29), and 65 (33%) 6-year-olds (48.0% male and 52.0% female) with a mean age of 6.52 (SD ⫽ 0.28). Assessments were conducted in a single session and consisted of a child interview, with caregivers completing supplemental questionnaires in order to obtain demographic information and information about the child’s abuse history. Part of the present sample was drawn from a larger investigation of child autobiographical memory. After completing the tasks in the present study, some children additionally completed tasks examining expressive vo-

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Table 1 Sample Characteristics Characteristic Child gender Female Male Ethnicity Caucasian Hispanic African American Multiracial Family income Income under $12,000 Income $12,000–$39,999 Income $40,000–$74,999 Income $75,000–$124,000 Income over $125,000 Caregiver’s highest level of education Less than high school High school Some college Associate’s degree or trade school Bachelor’s degree Master’s degree Doctoral degree

% 48.0 52.0 50.2 3.5 29.1 11.5 22.5 23.8 22.5 20.7 7.0 10.1 14.5 17.2 7.9 26.0 16.7 4.9

cabulary, self-concept, knowledge of emotions, reminiscing with a parent, as well as additional measures of inhibition.

The AMT-PV The AMT-PV is an adaptation of the original AMT (Williams & Broadbent, 1986) that was designed to be developmentally appropriate for children participating in the present investigation. The original AMT is a cue-word paradigm that has been used to assess autobiographical memory specificity among adults and children as young as age 7 (Valentino et al., 2009; Valentino et al., 2012); however, some of the cue words were deemed too difficult for preschool-aged children to readily understand (i.e., successful) upon piloting. Therefore, the AMT-PV was developed to be identical to the original AMT in administration and coding, but included more developmentally appropriate cue words. The AMTPV, like the original paradigm, consists of 10 cue words (five positive and five negative) that were presented orally and visually in a fixed order, alternating between positive and negative cues: happy, mad, surprised, sad, lucky, scared, strong, tired, smart, hungry. Children were asked by a trained research staff member to generate a specific memory in response to each individual cue word (e.g., “Think of one time that you felt _____ and tell me about it”). The experimenter gave the participant up to 1 min to generate a specific memory and prompted for a specific memory as necessary at least two times (i.e., “Can you tell me just one time when you felt that way?”). This format of presenting the cue word and prompting was repeated with each cue word. Experimenters were instructed to refrain from giving additional instructions or from helping to explain the cue word. The AMT-PV was videorecorded and subsequently transcribed verbatim. Children’s responses to the AMT-PV were then coded for the number of specific memories by two researchers who were unaware of the study’s hypotheses. As is standard for coding of the


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original AMT (Williams & Broadbent, 1986), the participant’s first memory response to each cue word (prior to any experimenter prompting) was coded for memory specificity. Memories were coded such that a score of 0 was defined as overgeneral and a score of 1 as specific. Instances in which the child provided no memory response were coded as 0. Memories were coded as specific when they contained details of a single past event that occurred at a specific time. Examples of memories coded as specific include “When my daddy found a coin on the ground and gave it to me,” “When my brother took my chocolate and ate it,” and “When my uncle blowed out the candles on my cake.” Examples of memories coded as overgeneral include memories of repeated categorical events (e.g., “At night when I’m in bed,” and “Everyday when I go to school”), memories of extended periods (e.g., “When we were at Disneyland”), and nonmemories (e.g., “I’ll be happy tomorrow”), as well as omissions (e.g., “I don’t know”). Because the code of “non-memory” could represent early truncation of the memory search, we focused our analyses on the number of specific (rather than overgeneral) memories, which is consistent with the majority of research in this area (e.g., Moore & Zoellner, 2007). Reliability analysis revealed high interrater reliability on the AMT-PV between two coders on 20% of the sample (␣ ⫽ .96). The AMT-PV demonstrated a high split-half reliability (␣ ⫽ .75). In addition, children’s responses after prompting were also coded for specificity in order to determine whether children were ever able to provide a specific memory for each prompt. A summary score including specific responses provided after follow-up prompting was computed for analyses seeking to confirm that child specificity was not a function of children’s ability to keep the instructions in mind given that poor memory for the task instructions has been previously associated with poor specificity (Yanes, Roberts, & Carlos, 2008), and difficulty keeping the instructions in mind may be particularly challenging for younger populations. Video recordings of the AMT-PV were also used to code child control/opposition and global warmth/friendliness. Ratings were adapted from the MacArthur Narrative Coding Manual-Rochester Revision (Robinson et al., 2000). This method has been used in prior research assessing school-age children’s memory specificity with the AMT (Valentino et al., 2009) and was used here to account for (a) children’s compliance and (b) aspects of the experimenter– child interaction that could potentially affect children’s willingness to respond. After watching the AMT-PV videos, coders rated participants’ controlling or oppositional behaviors on a 12-point Likert scale. For example, scores of 1–3 were rated for no controlling or oppositional behavior and 10 –12 for openly hostile, rude behavior that resulted in refusal to cooperate. Reliability analysis revealed high interrater reliability between three coders on 20% of the sample (␣ ⫽ .95). Next, coders rated the quality of the interaction between the examiner and the child on a 12-point Likert scale. For example, scores of 1–3 were rated for cold, unfriendly relating between the child and examiner, whereas ratings of 9 –12 were given for warm, positive relating between the child and examiner (see Valentino et al., 2009, for further scale descriptors). Reliability analysis revealed high interrater reliability between three coders on 20% of the sample (␣ ⫽ .91).

Day/Night Task (Gerstadt, Hong, & Diamond, 1994) The day/night task is a developmentally sensitive measure of behavioral inhibition in preschool-aged children (Carlson, 2005). Executive functioning in preschool is best captured by a unidimensional construct (Fuhs & Day, 2011; Wiebe et al., 2008). The day/night task asks children to respond “night” to a picture of a sun and “day” to a picture of a moon. There are 16 trials, and responses were scored as incorrect response (0), self-corrected response (1), and correct response (2) and then summed to create a total score.

Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT-4; Dunn & Dunn, 2007) The PPVT is an individually administered, multiple-choice test that assesses receptive vocabulary skills. Standardized scores were computed and covaried in all analyses to account for potential limitations in children’s vocabulary.

Traumatic Events Screening Inventory (TESI)-Parent Report Revised (Ghosh Ippen et al., 2002) Caregivers completed the TESI in order to obtain the child’s abuse history. The incidence of abuse was low (8.81%). The child’s abuse history was covaried in all analyses, as previous research with children has revealed increased OGM among children with an abuse history (Valentino et al., 2009).

Results Validity of the AMT-PV Prior to performing substantive analyses, a one-factor confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was performed to evaluate the validity of the AMT-PV by comparing the factor structure of the AMT-PV with that of the adult AMT. Prior examinations of the adult AMT suggest that responses to all cues (both positive and negative in valence) are related to a single construct (Griffith et al., 2009; Griffith, Kleim et al., 2012). To perform the CFA, each item was identified as an ordered categorical indicator, and the variance of the factor was fixed at one so that each item’s factor loading could be freely estimated. Multiple fit indices suggested good model fit, ␹2(35) ⫽ 33.18, comparative fit index ⫽ 1.0, root-mean-square error of approximation ⫽ 0.00, weighted root-mean-square residual⫽ 0.65 (Bollen, 1989; Hu & Bentler, 1999; Yu, 2002). Standardized factor loadings ranged from .45 to .80 (see Table 2). Therefore, consistent with the original AMT, the cue words selected for the AMT-PV all loaded onto a single factor construct. In addition to investigating the factor analytic structure of these items, we further investigated their properties from the perspective of IRT (Lord & Novick, 1968). IRT is a model-based framework that presupposes an underlying latent trait for ability level that is dependent on both the individual’s responses and the parameters of the items (Embretson & Reise, 2000). Thus, IRT allows us to simultaneously estimate item parameters while also estimating participants’ ability levels in a manner that is distinct from a total score calculation used in classical test theory. The item and scale parameters were estimated using the two-parameter logistic model (2PL) with one factor representing participants’ underlying ability


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Table 2 Summary of Item Parameters, Item Fit, and Factor Loadings for the AMT-PV Threshold


Variable Item Item Item Item Item Item Item Item Item Item Note.

1: Happy 2: Mad 3: Surprised 4: Sad 5: Lucky 6: Scared 7: Strong 8: Tired 9: Smart 10: Hungry

Slope

Item fit

Factor loadings

Estimate

SE

Z

Estimate

SE

Z

Bock’s ␹2

p

Estimate

p

⫺0.35 ⫺0.34 ⫺1.16 ⫺0.28 ⫺0.29 ⫺0.11 0.53 0.32 0.15 ⫺0.04

0.19 0.16 0.24 0.11 0.14 0.13 0.22 0.17 0.14 0.15

⫺1.89 ⫺2.18 ⫺4.90 ⫺2.56 ⫺2.02 ⫺0.87 2.44 1.92 1.03 ⫺0.24

0.92 1.18 1.20 2.28 1.31 1.49 0.83 1.05 1.28 1.11

0.22 0.25 0.27 0.51 0.27 0.31 0.21 0.24 0.27 0.24

4.21 4.64 4.38 4.44 4.81 4.86 3.9 4.31 4.7 4.57

5.70 17.67 15.50 12.75 12.77 6.34 2.52 3.58 9.22 3.76

.68 .02 .05 .12 .12 .61 .96 .89 .32 .88

0.51 0.58 0.57 0.8 0.61 0.66 0.45 0.56 0.62 0.55

⬍.001 ⬍.001 ⬍.001 ⬍.001 ⬍.001 ⬍.001 ⬍.001 ⬍.001 ⬍.001 ⬍.001

AMT-PV ⫽ Autobiographical Memory Test–Preschool Version.

level. The 2PL model was selected over the simpler Rasch model due to our interest in estimating individual item slopes. This is in keeping with similar prior research on the adult AMT (e.g., Griffith, Kleim, et al., 2012). Additionally, the 2PL model was preferred over the more complex 3PL model because the inclusion of a “guessing” parameter seems unnecessary for this particular application. Item slope and discrimination parameter estimates appear in Table 2. Item slopes—also called discrimination parameters— describe how well a given item is able to differentiate between participants having ability levels above or below the item’s location (Baker, 2001). Slope estimates ranged from 0.83 (SE ⫽ 0.21) to 2.28 (SE ⫽ 0.51), and all were significantly different from zero. Thresholds, which are also frequently referred to as difficulty parameters, depict the ability level at which participants are equally likely to respond “correctly” or “incorrectly” to the item in question (Embretson & Reise, 2000).1 As indicated in Table 2, thresholds ranged from ⫺1.16 (SE ⫽ 0.24) to 0.53 (SE ⫽ 0.22). Item slopes and thresholds can also be seen graphically in the form of the item characteristic curves illustrated in Figure 1. Bock’s ␹2 test was performed to assess item fit (see Table 2). This test involves comparing participants’ observed and expected scores as a way of assessing the items’ performance. Overall, the items performed exceedingly well. Only for Item 4, “mad,” did Bock’s ␹2 suggest a violation of the null hypothesis that the item fits the model well. However, we elected to retain this item, both for theoretical reasons and due to its strong factor loading in the CFA. Participants’ ability parameters ranged from ⫺1.70 (SE ⫽ 0.61) to 1.48 (SE ⫽ 0.64). As indicated in Figure 2, the information is high and standard errors are low across this ability range. This suggests that these items are both informative as well as reliable across the ability range in the present sample. On the basis of CFA and IRT results suggesting that items form a unified measure of one underlying construct, the sum of the 10 AMT-PV items was used in all subsequent analyses.

AMT-PV Models Substantive analyses were conducted in MPlus (MPlus 7.1; Muthén & Muthén, 1998 –2013), using full information maximum likelihood estimation to estimate missing data. See Table 3 for data regarding children’s performance on the AMT-PV by age group.

Age was examined as a continuous a variable in all subsequent analyses. Means, standard deviations, ranges, and correlations of relevant variables are presented in Table 4. Examination of the bivariate correlations revealed that child age was significantly correlated with AMT-PV specificity, inhibition, and control/opposition. Specificity was significantly correlated with inhibition, receptive vocabulary, control/opposition, and warmth/friendliness. Next, we tested whether child age was significantly associated with increased specificity. As predicted, child age was significantly associated with increased specificity (␤ ⫽ 0.59, SE ⫽ 0.19, p ⬍ .01) while controlling for the influence of children’s receptive vocabulary (␤ ⫽ 0.04, SE ⫽ 0.01, p ⬍ .01), children’s maltreatment history (␤ ⫽ ⫺0.18, SE ⫽ 0.39, p ⫽ .64), family income (␤ ⫽ ⫺0.03, SE ⫽ 0.06, p ⫽ .69), control/opposition (␤ ⫽ ⫺0.38, SE ⫽ 0.11, p ⬍ .001), and warmth/friendliness (␤ ⫽ 0.11, SE ⫽ 0.14, p ⫽ .43) on specificity. Finally, we implemented the nonparametric, bias-corrected bootstrap method recommended by Fritz and MacKinnon (2007) and MacKinnon, Lockwood, and Williams (2004) with 1,000 resamples to construct bias-corrected bootstrap 95% confidence intervals around the product coefficient of the indirect effect of child age via inhibition on child memory specificity. Tests of model fit indicated that the model was saturated. Although child age was significantly associated with increased inhibition as expected (␤ ⫽ 2.60, SE ⫽ 0.62, p ⬍ .001), inhibition was not significantly associated with specificity (␤ ⫽ 0.00, SE ⫽ 0.03, p ⫽ .95). Therefore, the 95% confidence interval of the indirect effect estimate contains zero [⫺0.14, 0.13], meaning that there is not a significant indirect effect of child age on specificity through inhibition. The 95% confidence interval of the direct effect was estimated to lie between 0.14 and 0.92, indicating a significant direct effect. Again, children’s receptive vocabulary, maltreatment history, family income, control/opposition, and warmth/friendliness were included as covariates in this analysis (see Figure 3). Although the total specificity score prior to any prompting is typically used as the dependent variable with the AMT, we also 1 The language of “threshold” is borrowed from the framework of ordered multinomial logit models and seems more appropriate here given that “difficulty” is more closely associated with IRT from an educational measurement perspective.



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Figure 1. Item characteristic curves.

sought to ensure that child specificity was not a function of children’s ability to keep the instructions in mind. Therefore, analyses were rerun with children’s total specificity score after prompting. All results after making this change were consistent with those presented above. Also, see Table 3 for descriptive statistics of child performance by age using this method of AMT-PV scoring.

Discussion Although OGM has been extensively studied among adults due to its clinical relevance, less is known about OGM in

Figure 2. Test information function and standard error of measurement (SEM).

childhood, particularly during preschool. Moreover, there is a need for normative research on autobiographical memory in childhood to serve as a baseline with which the child clinical literature can be compared. Therefore, we examined autobiographical memory among typically developing 4-, 5-, and 6-year-olds in order to elucidate normative developmental differences in autobiographical memory specificity during preschool. First, we created a developmentally appropriate downward extension of the original AMT (Williams & Broadbent, 1986), a generative retrieval cue paradigm widely used to test autobiographical memory specificity. A CFA revealed that the AMT-PV had the same underlying one-factor structure as previously established with the adult AMT in both clinical and nonclinical populations (Griffith, Kleim, et al., 2012; Griffith et al., 2009). Much like the CFA, IRT analyses suggest these items form a unified measure of one underlying trait, which is also consistent with IRT analyses of the adult AMT (Griffith, Kleim, et al., 2012; Griffith et al., 2009). Therefore, the present study used the total AMT-PV score in subsequent substantive analyses, as these results do not suggest a need to examine valence effects in the present sample. Moreover, both the item parameter estimates and the test parameters suggest these items are well suited to participants of this age range. The development of the AMT-PV makes a substantial contribution to the study of OGM by establishing a method for examining autobiographical memory specificity among preschool-aged children. Moreover, the present study provides support for other work suggesting that the basic ability to retrieve and report specific memories is in place by age 3 (Fivush & Nelson, 2004). An important next step will be to use the AMT-PV to examine OGM


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Table 3 Child AMT-PV Performance by Age Frequencies of memory types (%)

AMT-PV total scores M (SD)


Total initial responses by memory type a

b

Total after prompting c

d

Initial responses

After prompting

Child age

Specific

Categoric

Extended

No memory

Specific

Specificity

Specificity

Age 4 Age 5 Age 6

46.29 52.68 63.80

19.23 19.21 18.72

1.46 1.41 1.80

33.02 26.69 15.67

63.83 72.56 80.56

4.68 (2.58) 5.24 (2.75) 6.37 (2.46)

6.44 (2.42) 7.25 (2.42) 8.09 (2.14)

Note. AMT-PV ⫽ Autobiographical Memory Test–Preschool Version. a Categoric memories are of repeated categorical events (e.g., “every time we go to the park”). b Extended memories are memories of events lasting more than 1 day (e.g., “when we were on vacation”). c No memories also include responses such as, “I don’t know” and “All the time.” d Percentage of children who were ever able to provide a specific memory. This includes both initial specific memories and specific memories provided after additional prompting.

among preschoolers who are at risk for depressive and/or traumarelated psychopathology; Valentino (2011) proposed that the study of autobiographical memory specificity should be approached from the perspective of developmental psychopathology, where developmental processes and outcomes must be understood in the context of both typical development and atypical development (Cicchetti, 1984). Next, we examined age-related differences in children’s independent autobiographical memory specificity while controlling for the effects of child receptive vocabulary, child maltreatment history, family income, child control/opposition, and experimenter– child warmth/friendliness on specificity. The present study provides the first data that preschool-aged children’s ability to generatively retrieve specific autobiographical memories is positively associated with age. Such research is an important step in providing a baseline of memory specificity in the context of normative development in order for future research to compare OGM in clinical populations of children and to examine associated developmental consequences of OGM in clinical populations. In the present sample, the mean specificity score was 5.42, which is lower than the mean AMT specificity scores previously reported in the literature with older children. For example, in a sample of 7- to 13-year-olds, Valentino et al. (2009) reported mean specificity scores of 7.0 and 7.74 for abused and neglected children, respectively, and 7.61 for nonmaltreated children. Delineating what is normative for memory specificity versus OGM at various ages is essential for understanding whether OGM in clinical or at-risk

child samples is different from what is expected based on age alone. Moreover, such research will also serve as an important basis for beginning to establish clinically meaningful deficits in childhood OGM. Third, we examined how executive control influences specificity as a means of testing one mechanism that may help explain age-related differences in autobiographical memory specificity. To this effect, inhibitory control was evaluated as a potential mediator between child age and OGM in order to test the executive functioning portion of the CaR-FA-X etiological model of autobiographical memory specificity (Williams et al., 2007) in a preschool sample. Results indicated that behavioral inhibition is not associated with OGM in preschool. Therefore, the findings of the present study did not support the CaR-FA-X model, and instead builds on research indicating that behavioral inhibition is unrelated to OGM among clinical youth (Valentino et al., 2012). However, the CaRFA-X model does not distinguish between behavioral inhibition and other cognitive inhibitory processes involving inhibition against interference from information that was previously, but is no longer, relevant to the task (Friedman & Miyake, 2004). Therefore, future work may benefit from examination of proactive interference as a possible mechanism related to OGM. In addition, verbal fluency (i.e., the efficiency with which one may retrieve verbal information from memory), which is representative of the updating component of executive functioning, may relate to OGM and impairments in the retrieval process. Valentino et al. (2012) measured both letter fluency (i.e., the ability to quickly provide

Table 4 Descriptive Statistics and Correlations Among Study Variables Variable

1

2

3

4

5

6

1. Child age (N ⫽ 227) 2. AMT-PV (Specificity; N ⫽ 214) 3. Inhibition (N ⫽ 225) 4. PPVT (Vocabulary; N ⫽ 225) 5. Control/Opposition (N ⫽ 211) 6. Warmth/Friendliness (N ⫽ 211) M SD Range

— .24ⴱⴱ .30ⴱⴱ .11 ⫺.18ⴱ .12 5.49 0.87 4.04–6.97

— .18ⴱⴱ .31ⴱⴱ ⫺.41ⴱⴱ .24ⴱⴱ 5.42 2.68 0–10

— .25ⴱⴱ ⫺.23ⴱⴱ .06 26.35 7.45 0–32

— ⫺.25ⴱⴱ .01 106.83 18.51 61–154

— ⫺.55ⴱⴱ 2.53 2.02 1–12

— 7.20 1.53 2–12

Note. AMT-PV ⫽ Autobiographical Memory Test–Preschool Version; PPVT ⫽ Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test. ⴱ p ⬍ .05. ⴱⴱ p ⬍ .01.


1970


Figure 3. Examination of inhibition as a potential mediator. Unstandardized path coefficients are reported. Error variances are omitted from the figure. AMT-PV ⫽ Autobiographical Memory Test–Preschool Version; Vocab ⫽ Vocabulary. ⴱⴱ p ⬍ .01.

words beginning with a cue letter) and category fluency (i.e., the ability to quickly provide words that fit within a cue category) as they relate to OGM among youth and found that category fluency (which requires retrieval of semantically as opposed to phonetically related information) uniquely accounted for variance in OGM, whereas letter fluency did not. As such, further research examining unique aspects of executive functioning’s association with memory specificity is needed. Although the present study makes an important first step in increasing understanding of normative memory specificity differences associated with age during preschool, a number of limitations should be acknowledged. First, the present study was limited by its cross-sectional design. Longitudinal work is necessary to determine whether specificity is indeed associated with development. Future work should also seek to extend the present study’s findings further into childhood. Whereas memory specificity was associated with age in this preschool sample, future longitudinal work through middle childhood and adolescence will further contribute to the understanding of normative developmental trends in memory specificity. It is possible, for example, that specificity increases until a certain age and then plateaus. Moreover, there is a need for longitudinal work beginning with preschool-aged children and extending into other developmental periods to examine how performance on the AMT-PV compares with performance on the original AMT, as well as with performance on other memory tasks. For example, the Desse-Roediger-McDermott paradigm (Deese, 1959; Roediger & McDermott, 1995) uses a presentation of semantically related cue words to assess gist memory, and it would be informative to see how the development of gist memory relates, if at all, to the development of autobiographical memory specificity over time. Similarly, OGM has been associated with working memory and source memory (Raes et al., 2006) among clinical samples of adults. It will be important for future research to evaluate how autobiographical memory specificity relates to other types of memory across development. More broadly, there are limitations to the AMT task itself (Griffith, Sumner, et al., 2012) that are relevant to the AMT-PV as well. Although the AMT is the dominant task in the OGM literature, questions regarding what the AMT measures have been discussed in reviews of the OGM literature (Griffith, Sumner, et al., 2012). For example, the AMT is unable to distinguish between problems with memory storage and retrieval. In addition, the issue

of whether the AMT captures an individual’s ability to retrieve specific memories or simply reflects a memory style of responding in a specific or overgeneral manner has been raised in the adult literature (Griffith, Sumner, et al., 2012). Regardless of these issues, there are robust associations between performance on the AMT and affective disorders (Sumner, 2012; Valentino, 2011) in adults and youth. The present study’s contribution of the development of the AMT-PV will allow future studies to measure OGM in early childhood consistent with adult studies in order for future work to begin to address these issues and to identify the specific mechanisms that support autobiographical memory specificity performance. In addition, future studies using the AMT-PV should also seek to identify variables that mediate or moderate the association between age and memory specificity among preschoolers. For example, the self is theorized to be a main organizing structure for autobiographical memory and is emphasized both by theories of typical (Conway & Pleydell-Pearce, 2000) and atypical (Williams et al., 2007) autobiographical memory retrieval. Because the coherence and stability of self-concept improves throughout early childhood, it may be that self-concept development explains associations between age and autobiographical memory specificity. Examination of a cross-cultural sample of preschoolers, kindergartners, and second graders (Wang, 2004) and a cross-cultural sample of 3-year-olds (Wang, 2006) suggests that self-concept and autobiographical memory are associated constructs that emerge in the context of culture; therefore, future work using the AMT-PV to examine relations between autobiographical memory and selfconcept would also benefit from consideration of culture and autonomy versus relatedness. Valentino (2011) proposed that autobiographical memory specificity be studied in a broader context of development across levels of ecology, and with recognition that processes related to OGM likely occur in a reciprocal, transactional manner across levels of ecology. Another important exemplar of the child’s environment influencing autobiographical development is the way parents talk about past events with their children. An elaborative parent reminiscing style, during which parents ask open-ended questions, provide elaborative details, and confirm children’s contributions, helps the child to create a narrative of past events, and has been shown to facilitate more detailed autobiographical memories in young children (for a review, see Fivush & Nelson, 2004). This linguistic scaffolding of past events allows children to begin to make sense of the events and to relate them to their developing autobiography and self-concept (Bird & Reese, 2006). Maternal reminiscing style has also been linked to the emergence of autobiographical memory among 3-year-olds (Wang, 2006). Importantly, the quality of maternal reminiscing has recently been related to children’s autobiographical memory specificity (Valentino et al., 2014). It will be important for future research to compare children’s ability to contribute unique information to memory conversations in the context of reminiscing with their ability to independently generate and retrieve specific memories. Use of the AMT-PV to examine the questions suggested above would build on the present study’s findings to elucidate other important processes influencing OGM and autobiographical memory specificity development. Once the developmental processes of autobiographical memory specificity have been elucidated in normative populations, researchers will be in a much better position to


understand the etiology of OGM in clinical populations and its associated developmental consequences.


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Received June 19, 2013 Revision received January 10, 2014 Accepted April 11, 2014 䡲

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