Is the Matrix of Long-Term Memory Throughout Childhood Affected by Age, Distress, and Attachment?

Introduction

The development of long-term memory throughout adolescence is one of the most significant elements of psychology study because it explains how memories stay intact and enable us to remember them as we grow up. The growth of long-term memory throughout this era is crucial to understanding cognitive development and developing treatments for memory disorders. The study topic for this essay is: Is the matrix of long-term memory throughout childhood affected by age, distress, and attachment? At what rate is it recommended and retained? This research topic examines how distress affects memory consolidation, how aging affects memory performance, and how attachment security affects memory. Researchers might examine whether older adolescents have better memory recall than younger teenagers or whether crucial period stress affects memory retention over time (Gonzalves et al., 2022). Additionally, studying attachment patterns and memory consolidation throughout adolescence may reveal individual differences.

Literature Review Body

Age-related Changes in Long-term Memory

We must include age-related changes in long-term memory to understand adolescent memory development. Longitudinal studies show that 9–12-year-olds have more real memories and are more resistant to fraudulent ideas. Paz-Alonso and Goodman found that older children at Time 2 had a smaller ratio of past or present tense verbs, suggesting stronger resistance to peer influence. These results support prior research showing older children had fewer memory problems hours to days following an occurrence. Howe found that younger children are more impacted by social connections than older children within the same age range.

Time-related triumphs in a memory trial are particularly obvious when comparing current performance. Most children aged 3–5 score poorly in non-suggestive and suggestive laboratory settings, but memory performance between Time 1 and Time 2 shows discrepancies (Bauer et al., 2003). At Time 1, preschoolers have strong memories, but older children at Time 2 have better memories and stronger resistance to suggestibility, indicating a gradual memory development during adolescence. The mismatch between past studies and current findings suggests that age is critical in neuroscientific theories of adolescent long-term memory development (Schneider & Ornstein, 2019). One must include developmental changes when assessing the psychometric qualities of a test for children and adolescents since age enhances the ability to resist social influence and remember information accurately. These age-related changes have biological and psychological effects, notably in legal applications that use children’s eyewitness recall to rule out perjury.

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Impact of Distress on Long-term Memory

Stress’s impact on long-term memory is a prominent teenage memory problem. Studies have shown that memory hits at critical stages like preschool may affect memory retention over time. (Bauer et al., 2003) examined how stress shortly after a stressful incident improves young children’s memory performance. Adolescents are more affected by unhappy memories than adults. Some study suggests that sadness may increase emotional memory, especially in older adolescents, by enhancing adolescent memories of painful events. Older children with greater distress levels during important early communication (the Preschool Attachment Coding System or PACS) are more likely to remember events vividly as teens (Gonzalves et al., 2022). This may be because it strains concentration, and older children can better remember knowledge over time.

The longitudinal investigations show that discomfort and memory function vary with aging. In Time 1, younger kids with more outstanding distress ratings were better at recalling the incident than those with low distress scores (Mast et al., 1980). Even yet, some years later, at Time 2, older children who were more disturbed were more likely to describe the incident adequately, whereas those who were less affected forgot it (Gonzalves et al., 2022). Understanding the significance of emotional events in long-term memory consolidation shows that adolescent memory consolidation is a complicated link between personal experiences and memory preservation. This illustrates the importance of affective variables in memory research and proposes that we should concurrently study how critical emotional events impact memory formation. These findings also help us understand memory consolidation and retrieval during adolescence, crucial to understanding memor