Discriminating between action memories: children's use of kinesthetic cues and visible consequences

Abstract

The present experiments examined the sorts of cues that might be available to facilitate children's ability to discriminate between memories for their own actions. In Experiment 1, 7 and 10 year olds engaged in two types of tracing exercises (using a pencil and a finger; a stylus and a finger; or a stylus and a pencil). Discrimination performance was better when distinguishing between memories involving the use of a pencil vs. a finger than in either of the other two cases. In Experiment 2, children traced and imagined tracing pictures using one of these three tools. Discriminations between memories for tracing and imagined tracing varied with the type of tool involved and interacted with the type of tracing activity (tracing vs. imagining). These differences in discrimination performance demonstrated the importance of kinesthetic cues and visible consequences for children's memory discriminations.