Emotional Focus on Other People: Impact on Children’s Source Monitoring Stacie Kovacs Jennifer Rosentrater Nora Newcombe Temple University

Acknowledgements Meredith Meyer Shannon Pruden & Anthony Dick Temple University Infant Lab Children, parents, and the preschool teachers and directors

Memory Declarative Nondeclarative Semantic Facts Episodic Events Skills Motor Perceptual Cognitive Adaptation Level Priming Perceptual Semantic Shifts in Judgment and Preferences Dispositions Simple Classical Conditioning Operant Conditioning Nonassociative Habituation Sensitization

What Is the Relation of Episodic Memory to Autobiographical Memory? Semantic Episodic Impersonal Self-Related Paris is the capital “Tree” was on the of France. free recall list. That’s a picture of A picture of that face Al Gore. was in this experiment. I was born in NJ. My picnic last Sunday. That’s a picture of my That’s a picture of the mother. guy I met at Joe’s party.

Development of Autobiographical Memory Earliest appearance –Date and describe earliest memory  3 or 3.5 yr E.g., Mullen (1994) Reaches adult levels –Know vs recollect  4.6 yr E.g., Bruce et al. (2000)

A Source Monitoring Framework Source refers to how, where or from whom one learned a fact Source also means context or background information –e.g., temporal or spatial information Source is not a “tag” in memory Any factor that disrupts the quality of encoding or retrieval will impair later source monitoring

Development of Source Monitoring Emerges around age 4 Reaches adult levels around 10 yrs Various factors affect ability to make source judgments (e.g., suggestibility, source similarity)

Emotional Focus and Source Monitoring Adults who rehearse the factual or perceptual aspects of an event identify source better than those who rehearse affective aspects (Hastroudi et al., 1994) Adults find it easier to identify the source of statements when adopt an Other-focus (Johnson et al., 1996)

Experiment 1 Aims: Examine whether adopting an Other-focus improve preschoolers’ source monitoring ability Examine the relationship between source monitoring and a developing theory of mind

Self-focus: “ Do you feel the same way as my friend? ” Other-focus: “ Tell me how my friend feels. ” “I really like going to Chuck E. Cheese.” Source Memory Task Exp. 1 “I really don’t like to eat broccoli!”

Testing Procedure Exp. 1 “Did you hear, ‘I really like going to Chuck E. Cheese.’ ?” If yes, “Did Billy say it, or did Ashley say it, or shake your head ‘no’ if nobody said it.”

Theory of Mind (ToM) Tasks Exp. 1 False-belief tasks used to assess “other” theory of mind (Perner et al., 1987; Flavell et al., 1983) –E.g., Rock/Sponge task How-know tasks used to assess “self” theory of mind (Perner & Ruffman, 1995) –E.g., “Did I tell you or did you see where the ball was hidden?”

Recognition Scores Exp. 1

Source Monitoring Scores Exp. 1

ToM Results False-belief tasks No age differences Children who passed had better recognition than children who failed No effect on source monitoring scores How-know tasks 5-year-olds answered more “how-know” questions correctly than 4-year-olds No effect on recognition or source monitoring scores

Conclusions Exp. 1 Adopting an Other-focus during encoding improves source monitoring, at least for 5- year-olds Self focus improves recognition 4-year-olds may benefit from taking an Other- focus if the speakers’ emotions are more salient

Experiment 2 Aims: Examine the benefit of Other-focus when the speakers are both seen and heard Examine whether adopting Other-focus improves SM when the speakers are similar

Source Memory Task Exp. 2 Watch a video of two similar females make statements about various topics (e.g., “Hot dogs are so gross!”) Easier response alternatives

Testing Procedure Exp. 2 “Did Mandy, Elizabeth, or no one say, ‘Hot dogs are so gross!’?”

Recognition Scores Exp. 2

Source Monitoring Scores Exp. 2

Conclusions Exp. 2 Adopting an Other-focus during encoding improves source monitoring when the sources are similar, at least for 5-year-olds There is a shift in source monitoring between 4 and 5 years with regard to emotional focus

Summary Other focus improves source monitoring for both similar and dissimilar sources, at least for 5-year-olds During the preschool years, children begin to bind individual features of an event to form a complex memory Examining the role of emotional focus is a fruitful direction in understanding the development of source monitoring