Human childhood is characterized by dramatic changes in the mind and brain. However, little is known about the large-scale intrinsic cortical network changes that occur during childhood because of methodological challenges in scanning young children. Here, we overcome this barrier by using sophisticated acquisition and analysis tools to investigate functional network development in children between the ages of 4 and 10 years (
Adults struggle to recollect episodic memories from early life. This phenomenon—referred to as “infantile” and “childhood amnesia”—has been widely observed across species and is characterized by rapid forgetting from birth until early childhood. While a number of studies have focused on infancy, few studies have examined the persistence of memory for newly learned associations during the putative period of childhood amnesia. In this study, we investigated forgetting in 137 children ages 3–5 years old by using an interactive storybook task. We assessed associative memory between subjects after 5‐min, 24‐h, and 1‐week delay periods. Across all delays, we observed a significant increase in memory performance with age. While all ages demonstrated above‐chance memory performance after 5‐min and 24‐h delays, we observed chance‐level memory accuracy in 3‐year‐olds following a 1‐week delay. The observed age differences in associative memory support the proposal that hippocampal‐dependent memory systems undergo rapid development during the preschool years. These data have the potential to inform future work translating memory persistence and malleability research from rodent models to humans by establishing timescales at which we expect young children to forget newly learned associations.
more » « less- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10449269
- Publisher / Repository:
- Wiley-Blackwell
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Developmental Science
- Volume:
- 24
- Issue:
- 5
- ISSN:
- 1363-755X
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Abstract Previous research has established important developmental changes in sleep and memory during early childhood. These changes have been linked separately to brain development, yet few studies have explored their interrelations during this developmental period. The goal of this report was to explore these associations in 200 (100 female) typically developing 4- to 8-year-old children. We examined whether habitual sleep patterns (24-h sleep duration, nap status) were related to children’s performance on a source memory task and hippocampal subfield volumes. Results revealed that, across all participants, after controlling for age, habitual sleep duration was positively related to source memory performance. In addition, in younger (4–6 years, n = 67), but not older (6–8 years, n = 70) children, habitual sleep duration was related to hippocampal head subfield volume (CA2-4/DG). Moreover, within younger children, volume of hippocampal subfields varied as a function of nap status; children who were still napping (n = 28) had larger CA1 volumes in the body compared to children who had transitioned out of napping (n = 39). Together, these findings are consistent with the hypothesis that habitually napping children may have more immature cognitive networks, as indexed by hippocampal integrity. Furthermore, these results shed additional light on why sleep is important during early childhood, a period of substantial brain development.
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Background Children with the temperament of behavioral inhibition (
BI ) face increased risk for social anxiety. However, not all children withBI develop anxiety symptoms. Inhibitory control (IC ) has been suggested as a moderator of the pathway betweenBI and social anxiety. This study uses longitudinal data to characterize development ofIC and tests the hypothesis thatIC moderates associations between earlyBI and later social anxiety symptoms.Methods Children completed a Go/Nogo task at ages 5, 7, and 10 years as part of a longitudinal study of
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