Examining temporal memory and the factors that support its development

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The proposed studies fit into a larger long-term program of research aimed at examining the factors that contribute to age-related improvements in episodic memory. Episodic memory allows us to recall past events from a specific place and time. Memory for the sequence or temporal order of past events is critical for episodic memory (e.g, Tulving, 2002). Over the past few decades, using imitation-based paradigms, it has bee established that infants recall the order of a sequence of actions within an event (e.g., Pathman see Bauer, 2002, 2007 for review). In comparison to the abundance of this infancy literature, little is known about how older children order events within an experience. This gap in the developmental literature is conspicuous given that ordering events is a fundamental feature of episodic and autobiographical memory, and thus would influence the continued development of these capacities. These gaps are also conspicuous because ordering events has been a focus in the animal and adult episodic memory literature, especially in relation to the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex, arguably the episodic memory “centers” of the brain. My research program helps to fill these gaps, in order to inform the episodic memory development literature, but also help align the developmental literature with the animal model and adult literature on episodic memory. ******In a series of experiments, I examined memory for temporal order in middle to late childhood and in young adulthood (Pathman & Ghetti, 2014, 2015). These studies showed that eye movements can be used to track long-term memory for temporal order, and was sensitive to age-related change. In the proposed studies, I continue this line of research in two ways. First I examine whether memory accuracy and eye movement effects reported can be linked to age-related changes in brain regions implicated in temporal memory (e.g., hippocampus, prefrontal cortex). Second I extend the work to a larger age range, to create a developmental trajectory of temporal order memory from early to late childhood. ******Aims:***1) Track development of temporal memory in school-aged children and young adults using behavioral tests of temporal memory accuracy, and examine the factors that contribute to age-related improvements. (Studies 1-3)***2) Examine the development of the hippocampus using indirect (e.g., eye-tracking) and direct (e.g., structural MRI) measures of the hippocampus. (Study 1)***3) Examine the factors that contribute to age-related improvements in temporal memory in middle to late childhood, by examining, for example, how temporal memory accuracy relates to hippocampal structure. (Study 1) ***4) Examine the contribution of the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex during temporal memory retrieval using functional MRI. (Study 2)***5) Adapt the paradigm testing temporal memory using eye movements in middle and late childhood to early childhood (Study 3)