Children Exhibit Superior Memory for Attended but Outdated Information Compared to Adults

Overview

Journal Nat Commun

Specialty Biology

Date 2024 May 14

PMID 38744836

Authors

Yingtao Fu

Tingyu Guo

Jiewei Zheng

Jie He

Mowei Shen

Hui Chen

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Research on the development of cognitive selectivity predominantly focuses on attentional selection. The present study explores another facet of cognitive selectivity-memory selection-by examining the ability to filter attended yet outdated information in young children and adults. Across five experiments involving 130 children and 130 adults, participants are instructed to use specific information to complete a task, and then unexpectedly asked to report this information in a surprise test. The results consistently demonstrate a developmental reversal-like phenomenon, with children outperforming adults in reporting this kind of attended yet outdated information. Furthermore, we provide evidence against the idea that the results are due to different processing strategies or attentional deployments between adults and children. These results suggest that the ability of memory selection is not fully developed in young children, resulting in their inefficient filtering of attended yet outdated information that is not required for memory retention.

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