Differential attentional demands on implicit and explicit associative memory in children 8–12 years old

Associative memory improves during childhood, suggesting an age-related improvement in the binding mechanism responsible for linking information together. However, tasks designed to measure associative memory not only measure binding, but also place demands on attention. This makes it difficult to dissociate age-related improvements in memory from the development of attention. One way to reduce attentional demands is to test memory implicitly versus explicitly. In this study, children (8-, 10-, and 12-years-old) completed separate implicit and explicit associative memory tests. For the implicit task, children incidentally encoded pairs of objects by making an object categorization decision. At test, they completed the same task, but unbeknownst to the participants, the pairs were either intact, rearranged, or new. Next, children completed another incidental encoding phase, then an explicit test in which they indicated whether the pairs were intact, rearranged, or new. For the implicit test, all age groups had faster reaction times for intact than rearranged pairs (indicative of implicit associative memory). In the explicit test, memory performance (<i>d'</i>) improved with age. A separate measure of attention related to performance in both the explicit and implicit tasks. Together, these results support that attentional mechanisms contribute to age-related improvements in associative memory.