Do young children really have better memories than adults?

Main Category: Public Health
Article Date: 23 Jul 2004 - 10:00 PDT


Referring to an article entitled: "Young kids have better memories than adults. Children use different form of reasoning, study suggests" as posted on MSNBC.COM quoting a Reuter's story from the journal Psychological Science.

The problem is, it is true but not at all for the reasons assumed. "Small children apparently have better memories than their parents, researchers reported on Thursday." [ref]

Why would that be true?

"Vladimir Sloutsky, director of the Center for Cognitive Science at Ohio State University", led the study and came to conclusions.

"...Children used a different form of reasoning called similarity-based induction when they analyzed the pictures. When shown subsequent pictures of animals they looked carefully to see if the animal looked similar to the original cat. Adults, however, used category-based induction - once they determined whether the animal pictured was a cat, they paid no more attention. So when they were tested later, the adults didn't recognize the pictures as well as the children."

The researchers would have one believe that somehow between 5 years of age and adult, the human brain changes the method it uses to recall memories. That is absurd.

What changes and what accounts for the difference in the researcher's results is the different memory being used by the 5 year old and the adult.

Between the ages of three and eight children begin to acquire the sense of self they will come to know as their own being. Healthy adults have achieved that state years before and have developed a memory in long-term based upon its supported existence.

Generally. five year old children have not developed the self. They may toy with its emerging qualities by assigning an imaginary friend to the 'being' they perceive is in them or they may advance to the 'on' state of self-awareness and immediately grasp its inherent "selfness".

Still others may not acquire the true sense of self until later in the teenage years and will suffer from emotional distress because of it.

Many, especially today with the dependency on external stimulus not requiring mental evaluation (ie. television, movies, video games, internet sites, visual stimuli) never acquire a true sense of self and use that short-term memory as more of a way-station to long-term. Those people suffer from depression, are easily angered and tend to make decisions based on their past decisions without regard for consequences they have not already experienced.

Young children live in long-term memory.

What goes in comes close to right back out again when stimulated by what went in before. When that happens to an older person that person will live in the past, not concentrate on the 'now' and worry about the 'future' as it will be what the past has been.

So what would the difference be between Sloutsky's methods of memory recall?

"Similarity-based induction" and "category-based induction" are essentially the same thing. The only difference is in the perception of there being a difference. That, as well as their being descriptive of two different processes

If something is 'similar' it can also be said to fit into a category. If something is in a category it is essentially similar to anything else in the same category. Sloutsky created a circle of logic in naming the two forms of observed memory recall.

The reason he did is that all memory is 'similar' memory, which makes all memory similar to category recognition.

Induction, on the other hand is a beginning, not a deduction. One is inducted into something, not deducted into something.

This makes Sloutsky's terminology flawed in that the terms only refer to the process of acquiring data by which to cause a recall of memory. In other words, the terms used are oxymorons.

In reality the process of memory recall is a combination of stimulus from a sensor input, compared to past (long-term) memory in order of the time it was last introduced to long-term memory which determines its strength of recall.

Memory (both long and short-term) is not like a computer's memory. Memory is not 'stored' in the brain. It is fluid and is constantly moving deeper into the 'past' while becoming smaller and smaller values (which creates the concept of a passing of time).

For the concept of 'time' to take root in a human the short-term memory must be active from which to deduce a difference in memory age.

For a five year old the concept of 'time' has not yet emerged as memory is new (compared to an older brain) and therefore more similar and less different in 'age' or strength, so therefore easier to recall.

Sloutsky says, "it's one case where knowledge can actually decrease memory accuracy". [ref]

And that would not be true. It is not knowledge that does anything. If knowledge did anything such as decrease memory, then a person who had memorized a book would be unable to recall it's beginning. A person who graduated from college with a PhD would be unable to use the fundamentals of her chosen field.

What is true is the way memory is formed.

Memory is formed from new input and the comparison to past memory. The result is the new memory made up partially of the new input and partially of the past memory. Less past memory, the more the new memory is made of input. With little objection to the type of input through past memory, the five year old will recall it not only faster, but with more clarity or precision.

Memory made in this manner means any memory recalled is a product of past memory. Your recollection of that five year old birthday party is not the recall of the party's input. It is the recall of everytime you have recalled it before. That is how the past can become muddled and a witness can become useless in court.

This statement is fascinating: "And when taught to use category-based induction like adults, the children's ability to remember dropped to the level of adults." [ref]

Replicating the result of short-term observation (yes I know that, no I don't know that) is not doing what self-awareness does. It is doing what self-awareness results in without regard for what causes it.

Self-awareness is caused by short-term memory in humans that processes input after it has been compared to long-term memory by looping it into a circle then placing it in long-term memory.

It is how you recall being you. Long-term is seeded by short-term, which is seeded by long-term.

Children of five years, for the most part, have not made the connection in long-term that a short-term 'self' exists so they are not placing adjusted memory into long-term. They are placing direct comparisons of input to long-term into long-term.

The study was on the right track until the short-term researcher attempted to describe a process his maturity would not permit.

Reference: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5489242

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