Understanding Age Differences in Memory: Disentangling Conscious and Unconscious Processes

Abstract

Distinct processes involved in memory development were explored by obtaining separate measures of preschoolers’ and college students’ use of familiarity and conscious recollection in picture recognition. In each of two testing sessions (separated by one week; with different video materials), participants viewed pictures in the context of hearing a story. Further phases of the experimental procedure were based on process dissociation, a methodology that provides separate estimates of the contributions of conscious recollection and familiarity. Consistent with existing literature on separate implicit and explicit tasks, the results revealed a reliable difference between preschoolers and adults for measures of conscious recollection. In contrast, but also consistent with past research with implicit memory tasks, no developmental differences were observed for familiarity estimates. Results were discussed in the context of controversy regarding the best procedures for measuring different memory processes.