Memory for space and time in 2-year-olds

Abstract

Although the capacity to remember spatial and temporal information may develop at different rates throughout childhood, its early development has rarely been examined within the same participants, using the same task, and across different time delays elucidating retention of different aspects of early episodic memories. We used a novel tablet game to investigate memory for objects’ spatial locations and temporal order in a sample of toddlers ranging in age from 2 years to 2;8 years (M = 2;4 years, SD = 2 months; N = 73). We examined performance both immediately after an initial and an additional demonstration, following a 20-minute delay, and 1 week after learning; performance was also assessed following a new demonstration after the 1-week delay test. Using a linear mixed model, we found that toddlers remembered spatial locations better than temporal order, and temporal memory decayed more quickly and did not benefit from reminders compared to spatial memory, underscoring that early memory fragility may depend on the type of information being retained.