Predicting explicit memory for meaningful cartoons from visual paired comparison in infants and toddlers.

We tested the memory of 18-, 33-, and 39-month-olds (N = 120) for dynamic stimulus material (simple cartoons) after 6 months in a visual paired comparison (VPC) task. We also tested the explicit recognition memory (ERM) for the same material. Only the oldest age group (39-month-olds) showed a significant visual (familiarity) preference at the test.

Data related to measures of physiological arousal during everyday life experiences and their relation to self-reports of subjective experience of both the event and its memory.

Emotionally intense experiences lead to particularly durable and detailed autobiographical memories (AM) [1,2]. However, the influence of arousal on self-reports of the phenomenological characteristics of events and AMs is not direct, but moderated at the cognitive level [3,4]. To address how individual differences in emotional awareness moderate the physiology-subjective experience link, we collected data using a questionnaire from the mindfulness literature, the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ [5]).

How is physiological arousal related to self-reported measures of emotional intensity and valence of events and their autobiographical memories?

Research suggests that emotionally intense experiences that elicit higher-than-average physiological arousal responses lead to particularly durable and detailed autobiographical memories. Yet, the lack of objective measures of physiological arousal while events unfold in everyday life makes it hard to corroborate this lab finding. Also, it is uncertain how well arousal maps onto self-reports of the phenomenological characteristics of autobiographical events and memories.

Flexible, rapid and automatic neocortical word form acquisition mechanism in children as revealed by neuromagnetic brain response dynamics.

Children learn new words and word forms with ease, often acquiring a new word after very few repetitions. Recent neurophysiological research on word form acquisition in adults indicates that novel words can be acquired within minutes of repetitive exposure to them, regardless of the individual's focused attention on the speech input. Although it is well-known that children surpass adults in language acquisition, the developmental aspects of such rapid and automatic neural acquisition mechanisms remain unexplored.

Three-year-olds' memory for a person met only once at the age of 12 months: very long-term memory revealed by a late-manifesting novelty preference.

This study examined three-year-olds' verbal and non-verbal memory for a person met only once after a 28 month interval. Children in the Test group (N=50) had participated in an earlier experiment at our lab at the age of 12 months where they met one of two possible experimenters. At this past event half of the children were tested by one, the other half by the other experimenter.