Canadian study suggests we may be underestimating children’s memory capabilities

Vancouver Public Library facilitator Marcus Mendes, right, leads the Man in the Moon program as Nick Hunter and his six-month-old son Robinson Hunter, left, and Bruce Stewart and his one-year-old daughter Sara Stewart, centre, listen at the library's South Hill branch in Vancouver, B.C., on Thursday June 11, 2009. The program combines reading, singing and dancing to help fathers and their babies learn stories and nursery rhymes while bonding. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck

New research from York University suggests that we may be underestimating what kids are capable of when it comes to their memories.

The study, published in the journal Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications on Wednesday, found that children as young as four compete with adults using a complicated technique known as “temporal clustering” when recalling information.

Four groups of children aged four to 10, were taken to a week-long summer camp at the Toronto Zoo and were shown different exhibits. At the end of the camp, when they were asked to name the animals they saw at the zoo, their answers surprised the researchers.

“We were interested in how many animals children of different ages recalled. We found the expected pattern that older children recalled more animals than younger children. But we were especially interested in the order of their recall. Were children showing temporal clustering? And we found that they were.” York psychology professor and research team lead Thanujeni Pathman said in a news release.

Temporal clustering — the idea that people remember things in groupings based on the timing of those experiences – is a well-documented process in adults. Researchers have discovered that children as young as four search for memories using this same process, noted research.

“If a child’s recall response was ‘ostrich, gorilla,’ those would be animals that they saw in different spatial and temporal contexts. That is not an example of temporal clustering. But if the child said ‘ostrich, zebra’ — these animals were experienced together, so the response would show temporal clustering,” Pathman added.

According to research, a part of the child brain called the hippocampus. continues to develop later into childhood than previously thought. Researchers say the new study supports earlier findings that there is a jump in memory around age seven or eight.

Reporting for this story was paid for through The Afghan Journalists in Residence Project funded by Meta.