What did they do: Looked at memories for an experienced and a never-experienced medical procedure

Why did they do it:

1. "identify how age and delay influence children’s long-term memory and investigate whether typical childhood amnesia effects would emerge" (237)
2. "examine how stress relates to children’s memory following long delays" (237)
3. "determine whether individual-difference factors predict children’s long-term memory and suggestibility" (273)

What kind of research has come before this?

• The authors point to research that has tried to examine the effects of linguistics capabilities, memory trace strength, source-monitoring capabilities, and interviewer biases.
• The authors claim that research has not been conducted looking at the effects of social and emotional factors on children’s long-term memory
• Research on Childhood Amnesia: the inability for adults to recall experiences before the age of 3 or 4
• Research on memory for stressful events: These data are inconsistent and are one of the main reasons for undertaking the current study.
• The researchers of this study question the rating procedure for the level of stress the child experienced that have been used in similar VCUG studies. This brings up the question did this study address this concern? My answer. No!
• False Memory Debate: They mention the debate between Loftus and Pezdek about the ability for memories to be implanted based on the type of memory being implanted.

• Children’s preparation for the VCUG procedure

• The amount of time spent by the parent and child discussing the procedure

• Parental attachment
• Secure
• Insecure
• Avoidant

• They measured children’s memory for the VCUG, a uncomfortable bladder diagnostic procedure.
• They attempted to implant a false memory for a nose operation.
• Get parents to fill out 4 questionnaires pertaining to the three sources of individual differences and medical history questionnaire.

Participants:

• 43 children aged 3 to 13 years of age, all had undergone a VCUG between the ages of 2 and years of age
• 30 participants had only experienced 1 VCUG but 13 had experienced between 2 to 4 VCUGs
• The participants had experienced the VCUG procedure from 8 to 69 months prior to the memory test
• These participants were identified through medical records 22 from the United States and 21 from New Zealand

• Two groups were formed based on the age at the time of the VCUG

• Young: less than 48 months old
• Old: 48 months or older

• Two delays groups were formed

• Short: less than 36 months since VCUG procedure
• Long: more that 36 months since the VCUG procedure

Questionnaires
 

Demographic Questionnaire	General questions on children’s personal and family background (education, family income, children’s ethnicity, and child health history
Relationship	Measured romantic relationship style: Secure, fearful, avoidant, preoccupied, and dismissing avoidant
Emotional Reaction Questionnaire	Parent’s judgement of the level of upset and fear, immediately before, during and after the VCUG
Parent-Child Communication Questionnaire	Parent’s answered how they prepared their children for the VCUG and how much they communicated about the procedure following the VCUG
Memory Interview	Four Sections Free recall Anatomical doll section Direct questions  False-event questions

Procedure:

• Interviews conducted normally at the participant family’s home
• Two interviewers went to the home. One interviewed the parents and one interviewed the children after consent was obtained.
• Parental Interview:
• Parents were shown the materials that would be used with their children and asked for written consent
• The parents then filled out the Demographic Questionnaire, Relationship Questionnaire, Emotional Reaction Questionnaire and Parent-Child Communication Questionnaire.
• Then the parents were asked about the VCUG procedure the child had experienced, and asked if the child had experienced a procedure similar to the nose procedure.
• Child Interview:
• Read the free-recall questions
• Anatomical doll used with props (some props were used in the VCUG procedure and some were not)
• Direct questions about the VCUG
• Questioned the child about the false nose medical procedure
• Debriefing

• The children’s interviews were videotaped and transcribed verbatim.
• Two researchers scored the transcriptions
• Inter-rater reliability was at or above .89

• were scored based on the units of correct information

• were scored as
• correct
• commission error
• omission error
• do-not-know
• unscoreable (3% of children’s response to specific questions, 2% of answers for misleading

• An overall VCUG score was given to the child after the judge read the entire interview. These were placed on a scale of 0 (no VCUG memory) 1 (possible VCUG memory) 2 (definite VCUG memory)

1. Based on childhood amnesia research they predicted that children 4 and older at the time of the VCUG would remember the procedure better

• The children 4 years or older provided more information on the free recall and the anatomical doll props than children younger than 4 years old
• View Figure 1 (p. 250) for an analysis of the age relatedness of these data to Childhood Amnesia
• When memories in children who remembered the VCUG was analyzed the effect was not as robust.
• This led this authors to claim that age only matter in children’s ability to remember the event and is not as good of a predictor for the quality or quantity of the remembered situation

1. The amount of delay experienced between the VCUG and the experiment would be negatively related to the child’s memory accuracy.

• Children in the short delay group remembered more information than the children in the long delay group
• However, the effects found with the delay were no longer significant when age at interview and number of VCUG were computed in a ANCOVAs, Fs(1, 39) £ 1.52.
• Longer delays did not predict increased inaccuracies or suggestibility

1. Children more prepared for the VCUG procedure were thought to have experienced less stress during the procedure. Therefore the better prepared children were predicted to have better memory for the VCUG

• Children who were more prepared for the VCUG were less upset and afraid both during and after the VCUG, rs £ -.33, p £ .05 (correlated stress levels with level of preparedness)
• There was not a significant correlation between preparedness and memory for the VCUG

1. More parent child communication about the VCUG following the procedure was predicted to enhance memory for the VCUG

• Mother and child communication immediately to 1 week following the VCUG was inversely correlated to children’s commission errors

1. Insecure parental attachment was thought to be related to memory inaccuracies for the VCUG

• children with more insecure parents more errors recounted the VCUG
• children of fearful avoidant parents were more likely to be upset prior to the VCUG, and more likely to omit information during the memory interview

1. The older the child is at the time of the experiment the harder it will be to create a false memory

• Suggestibility for the false event was proved to be positively related to suggestibility for the VCUG
• The age of the child was significantly related to agreeing to the false memory and the amount of false information that the child provided

1. Claim to have not created any prior predictions about the effect of stress on memory but refer to prediction 3 and I will let you decide if this is true.

• Stress during and after the VCUG was negatively correlated to how much information the children provided when minimally prompted
• Increased stress prior to the VCUG was related to increases in children’s correct and do not know responses to misleading questions
• The type of memory question and the point at which the parent was reporting the child’s level of stress (prior to, during and after the VCUG) may have different implications for memory accuracy

• Three children were not interviewed for the false medical procedure
• Of the remaining 40 children

Of these 17

1 simple said it happened

3 replicated information provided by the interviewer

13 gave some new information concerning the false event

• When read the full description of the nose procedure

11 said "I don’t know"

24 correctly responded "no"

• Of the 5, 4 were from New Zealand

• They admit that there is rather small when running some of their analyses, and may lack sufficient statistical power to detect a difference.
• Also, they admit that they ran like a billion statistical tests and therefore some of the significant results could simply be chance findings
• Feel these data support Childhood amnesia
• Two lines of Child amnesia research
• One suggesting that adults can not remember things before a certain age
• One that suggests that children can remember things that happened as early as when they were toddlers even after long delays
• The researchers do not feel safe in saying that this research supports the presence of a mechanism that allows stressful events from earlier in life to be remembered better