Making a memorable event: Effects of familiarity and organization on young children's recall of action sequences

Cognitive Development, 2, 327-338 (1987)

Making a Memorable Event: Effects of Familiarity and Organization on Young Children's Recall of Action Sequences

Patricia J. Bauer University of California at San Diego

Cecilia M. Shore Miami University

Recent research has focused on whether or not young children encode order information in their earliest representations of events. Elicited imitation was used to examine 17.5- to 23.0-month-old subjects' immediate and delayed recall (6- week delay) of event sequences characterized by different levels of familiarity and different types of relations among items. Ordered recall at both immediate and delayed testing was superior for familiar sequences and for novel sequences characterized by causal or enabling relations among items; ordered recall of novel sequences characterized by arbitrary relations among items was significantly lower. The data are consistent with the argument that children encode order information in their earliest representations of events and that the use of temporal information in recall is a function of the type of relations among items in a sequence.

T h e ex ten t o f c h i l d r e n ' s app rec i a t i on o f the t empora l o rde r o f even t s has been the

focus o f d e b a t e and resea rch . A c c o r d i n g to t rad i t iona l P iage t i an theory , the

abi l i ty to o rde r a s e q u e n c e o f e v e n t s is d e p e n d e n t upon reve r s ib le men ta l opera -

t ions cha rac t e r i s t i c o f the c o n c r e t e - o p e r a t i o n a l per iod . H o w e v e r , ch i ld ren as

y o u n g as 3 years o f age h a v e b e e n s h o w n to possess s table , o rde red rep resen ta -

t ions o f f ami l i a r even t s or " s c r i p t s " w h i c h are not unl ike those o f adul ts (Ne l son

This manuscript was prepared while the first author was a postdoctoral fellow sponsored by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Network on the Transition from Infancy to Early Childhood. Data collection was supported by grants from the Miami University Faculty Research Committee and the Miami University Family and Child Studies Center to the second author. We are grateful to the children and families who participated in this study, to the people who assisted in data collection and preparation--Kerry Brigle, Karen Heil, Susan Jasbeck, Ann Kuehnert and Tracy Walker--and to Donna Thai and an anonymous reviewer for their comments on an earlier version of this manuscript. We thank Jean Mandler for her comments on earlier versions of this manuscript and also for her significant conceptual contributions to this work.

Correspondence and requests for reprints should be addressed to Patricia J. Bauer, Department of Psychology, C-009, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093.

Manuscript received November 10, 1986; revision accepted March 17, 1987 327

328 Patricia I. Bauer and Cecilia M. Shore

& Gruendel, 1986). In symbolic play, it has been observed that children spontaneously combine two actions into an ordered sequence at 24 months of age (Fenson & Ramsay, 1980), and that the number of ordered actions children produce in elicited play doubles between 20 and 28 months of age (Shore, O'Connell, & Bates, 1984).

Based on their work with preschool children, Nelson and Gruendel (1986) have argued that children's earliest representations of an event include order information. They have interviewed children as young as 3 about what happens "during lunch at day care," "when you have dinner," and "when you go to McDonald's." The youngest children in their studies tend to mention fewer components of an event, relative to the older children, but they almost invariably mention the components in their usual or canonical order. In addition, the children demonstrate a good deal of consistency in their accounting of events over 1- to 4-week intervals between interviews. Nelson and Gruendel have argued that, in their earliest representations of an event, children encode information about the components of the event and also information about their temporal order.

In contrast, O'Connell and Gerard (1985) have argued that very young children's representations of events contain information about the components of the sequence but not necessarily information about their temporal order. They employed an elicited-imitation technique to examine 20- to 36-month-old children's recall of three-event sequences depicting familiar events (e.g., "eating a snack") presented in their canonical order, in reverse order, and in a scrambled, unrelated order of presentation. Their data indicated that, although their 20- month-old subjects could reproduce the elements of the canonical and reverse- order sequences, they demonstrated little or no ability to reproduce the modelled order of the sequences in any of the conditions. This led O'Connell and Gerard (1985) to conclude that their youngest subjects " . . . appear to understand that some actions go together, but they demonstrated little understanding of how they go together" (p. 679, original emphasis). Twenty-four-month-olds were able to reproduce the modelled order of the sequences only when they were presented in their canonical order and,.thus, when they were familiar to the subjects. The 28- month-olds produced both canonical and reverse-order sequences in their canonical order. Only the 36-month-olds were able to reproduce the modelled order of the sequences, regardless of whether or not they were presented in their canonical order or a reversed order. Additionally, only the 36-month-olds were able to reproduce the sequences of unrelated actions. O'Connell and Gerard argued that children's early abilities to use temporal order as a guide to recall rest upon familiarity with the events.

The preeminent role of familiarity in guiding recall of event sequences has been questioned by Mandler (1986). She has argued that children's use of temporal information to order recall of an event is not a function of familiarity, per se, but of how well the mental representation of the event is organized. The organization of an event representation is influenced by at least two factors: (a)

Memorable Events 329

familiarity, or the repeated experience of an event in an invariant temporal order; and (b) the type of relations among items in the sequence. Familiarity with an event was shown to play an important role in organizing recall for children in the age range tested by O'Connell and Gerard (1985) and for older children as well. For example, with the use of a picture-ordering technique, Fivush and Mandler (1985) demonstrated that 4- to 6-year-old children could generate and recall familiar event sequences in their proper order but that unfamiliar sequences were more difficult for them to recall in correct order. The repeated experience of the elements of an event in an invariant temporal order contributes to the development of a stable core around which a representation of an event is organized.

The type of relations among items in a sequence also influences the organization of an event representation. Items in a sequence can be linked either by causal or enabling relations, or they may stand in an arbitrary relationship to one another. A causal or enabling relationship exists when one item in a sequence m u s t take place before another in the same sequence. For example, you must open the door before you can exit through it. An arbitrary relationship exists when there is nothing inherent in the items that dictates their position in the sequence. For example, you may put on your coat either before or after you put on your hat. Several researchers have reported that children link together in a sequence causally related items more frequently and at a younger age than they do items that are not causally related (e.g., Hudson & Nelson, 1983; Nelson & Gruendel, 1986). In some sense, causal relations allow fewer degrees of freedom in the ordering of elements in a sequence. Thus, causal or enabling relations provide a less variable core around which a representation is organized, relative to arbitrary relations (see Slackman, Hudson, & Fivush, 1986, for a discussion of these and related issues).

If the ability to represent the temporal order of events is a function of the strength of their organization rather than familiarity, per se, differential levels of recall would be expected for sequences of events characterized by different types of relations among items as well as by different levels of familiarity. Ideally, one would like to contrast recall of familiar-causal event sequences with familiar- arbitrary, unfamiliar-causal, and unfamiliar-arbitrary event sequences. Howev- er, most of the events with which young children are familiar contain a mixture of causal and arbitrary relations. Therefore, a complete crossing of the two factors (familiarity and type of relation) is not feasible.

In the present study, we wanted to maximize subjects' opportunities to demonstrate temporally ordered recall. Thus, we used an elicited-imitation technique to assess immediate recall, delayed recall, and relearning of event sequences by 17.5- to 23.0-month-old children. The subjects were presented with event sequences characterized by different types of relations among items and different levels of familiarity. Specifically, we contrasted a familiar sequence with a novel-causal sequence and a novel-arbitrary sequence. It was expected that subjects' immediate and delayed recall would be superior for the familiar se -


quence and for the sequence of events characterized by causal or enabling relations among items, relative to the arbitrary sequence. Further, it was expected that relearning would be superior for the familiar and causal sequences, relative to the arbitrary sequence. Superior relearning can be taken as evidence of an already established, temporally organized representation of the event. No specific pattern of differential recall was expected for the familiar as compared to the causal sequence.

METHOD

Subjects Thirty subjects with a mean age of 21.0 months participated in the study. Ten subjects were aged 17.5 to 19 months, 10 were aged 19.5 to 21.0 months, and 10 were aged 21.5 to 23.0 months. An equal number of females and males were included in each age group. All of the subjects were seen in the laboratory for two visits, separated by 6 weeks.

Procedure One familiar sequence, one novel-causal sequence, and one novel-arbitrary sequence were tested for each subject. The sequences were as follows:

1. Familiar ("bath"). The child was presented with a stuffed bear dressed in colorful pajamas, a terry hand towel, and a plastic dishpan. The experimenter (E) modelled the sequence: "Take off Teddy's pajamas, put him in the tub, 'wash' the bear, (remove bear from the tub), dry him off ."

2. Novel-causal ("rat t le") . The child was presented with a small rubber ball and two round, graduated, nesting or stacking cups. The E modelled the sequence: "Put the ball in the cup (putting the ball into the larger cup), cover it up (inverting the smaller cup into the larger), shake it (shaking the "rattle' near her ear)."

3. Novel-arbitrary ("banging"). The child was presented with a flat block, a 6-in. dowel stick, and a plastic stacking ring. The E modelled the sequence: "Bang the ring (banging it to the block), spin the ring (causing it to spin on the table), stack the ring (stacking it on the dowel stick)."

For each sequence, the subjects were allowed to manipulate the props to be used prior to modelling of the sequence. This provided a baseline measure of the spontaneous occurrence of the targeted behaviors. The sequence of actions then was modelled, with narration, by the experimenter. After the experimenter had modelled the sequence, the props were returned to the subjects. The experimenter encouraged imitation with instructions such as, "Can you give the dirty bear a bath?" The subjects' postmodelling performance provided a measure of immediate recall. All 30 subjects returned to the laboratory 6 weeks later and the


procedure was repeated. At the second session, the children's performance prior to modelling constituted a measure of delayed recall, whereas their postmodelling performance constituted a measure of relearning. Neither the subjects nor their parents had been led to expect that the tasks would be presented again at Session II.

The sequencing task was one of several tasks administered during each 45- min experimental session. The sequences were interspersed among other tasks throughout the session. In order to keep the number of subjects to a minimum, the tasks were presented in a standard order, with the familiar sequence first, the novel-arbitrary sequence second, and the novel-causal sequence third. The sequences were separated from one another by other tasks.

Scoring Two independent raters watched videotapes of the sessions and recorded the behaviors of all 30 subjects. Disagreements between raters were resolved by a third rater. For each sequence, calculations were made of the number of different target actions produced and the number of different pairs of actions produced in the target order. ~ For example, on the novel-causal "rat t le" task, one subject produced the following actions: She put the ball in the small nesting cup, "pour- ed" the ball from the small cup to the larger, inverted the small cup into the larger, and shook the cups. The subject produced three different task-appropriate actions (ball into cup, invert small cup into larger, shake cups), and she also produced two different pairs of actions in the target order: (a) ball into cup and invert cup, and (b) invert cup and shake cups. The former provided a measure of the child's production of the elements of the scene, whereas the latter indicated the degree to which ordering was evident. It should be noted that the number of elements produced effects the production of pairs of actions in the target order. Thus, the two dependent measures are not independent of one another.

The above measures were calculated for subjects' premodelling performance at Session I (baseline), postmodelling performance at Session I (immediate recall), premodelling performance at Session II (delayed recall), and postmodelling performance at Session II (relearning).

RESULTS

There were no statistically significant differences between the three age groups at Session I or Session II, and there were no reliable gender differences. Subse- quent analyses were based upon the entire sample of 30 subjects.

Descriptive statistics for the number of different actions produced and the number of different pairs of actions produced in the target order are presented in

i Prior to resolution of disagreements, reliability between the two principle raters on both dependent variables ranged from 83% to 100% with a mean of 95% (calculated on 5 of the 30 subjects).

332 Patricia J. Bauer and Cecilia M. Shore

Table 1. Number of Different Actions Recalled and Number of Different Pairs of Actions Recalled in Target Order

Novel-Arbitrary Novel-Causal Familiar

M SD M SD M SD

Possible Possible Possible Different Actions Range (0-3) Range (0-3) Range (0-4)

Session 1 Baseline .97 .72 .57 .68 1.00 1.02 Immediate recall 1.00 .64 2.20 1.00 2.67 1.37

Session 11 Delayed recall .83 .38 1.53 .90 2.40 1.25 Relearning 1.33 .80 2.80 .48 2.53 1.14

Different Pairs of Actions in Possible Possible Possible Target Order Range (0-2) Range (0-2) Range (0-3)

Session 1 Baseline .10 .31 .10 .31 .23 .50 Immediate recall .17 .38 1.23 .86 1.10 .88

Session 11 Delayed recall 0.00 0.00 .53 .73 .73 .83 Relearning .30 ,54 1.80 .61 .93 .78

Table 1.A three (Sequence Type: nove l - a rb i t r a ry , n o v e l - c a u s a l , familiar) ×

four (Recal l Condi t ion: basel ine, immedia te recall , delayed recall , re learning)

within-subjects analysis o f var iance was conducted for both dependent variables. 2

There were statistically s ignif icant main effects o f Sequence Type and Recal l

Condi t ion , as wel l as Sequence Type × Recal l Condi t ion interactions on both

dependent variables. Turning first to discussion o f the overal l main effect o f

Sequence T y p e - - a c r o s s recall c o n d i t i o n s - - t h e r e was a main effect for the

number o f different target act ions, F(2 ,58) = 34.06, p < .001, and for the

number o f different pairs o f actions in the target order, F (2 ,58) = 37.49, p

< .001. Tukey tests of s ignif icant d i f ference indicated that, across recall condi-

2 Subjects' premodelling performance at Session I provided a baseline measure of performance, that is, the amount of targeted behavior that occurred spontaneously. One way to analyze the data would have been to subtract the level of baseline performance from each of the measures of recall, thereby creating difference scores reflective of change in performance after exposure to the modelled sequence. Difference scores were calculated and subjected to 3 (Sequence Type) x 3 (Recall Condition: immediate recall, delayed recall, relearning) analyses of variance. Analyses of the difference scores and analyses of the raw scores did not differ. As raw scores are conceptually easier to manage than difference scores, analyses of raw scores are reported.


tions, for both dependent variables, performance in the novel-arbitrary condition was significantly lower than performance in the novel-causal and familiar conditions, p < .05. Performance in the latter two conditions did not differ.

Second, there were statistically significant main effects of Recall Condition for both dependent variables. Across sequence types, there was a main effect for the number of different target actions, F(3,87) = 49.61, p < .001, and for the number of different pairs of actions in the target order, F(3,87) = 46.22, p < .001. Tukey tests of significant difference revealed that the locus of the effect was different for the two dependent variables. On the measure of the number of different target actions performed, baseline level of performance was significantly lower than performance in the other three recall conditions. Measures of immediate recall were not significantly different from measures of delayed recall or measures of relearning. However, measures of relearning were significantly greater than measures of delayed recall. Thus, across sequence types, (a) subjects demonstrated immediate recall of the elements of the sequence at Session I; (b) there was no statistically significant decrement in their ability to recall the elements over the 6-week, between-session interval; (c) there was significant relearning of the elements after modelling at Session II; but (d) measures of relearning at Session II did not exceed measures of immediate recall at Session I.

On the measure of the number of different pairs of actions in the target order, Tukey tests indicated that measures of baseline performance and measures of delayed recall did not differ. In similar fashion, measures of immediate recall and measures of relearning did not differ. The latter two measures were significantly different from the former two measures. Thus, across sequence types, subjects were more likely to adhere to the target order if they had seen the sequence modelled immediately prior.

The above main effects are qualified by significant interactions of Sequence Type and Recall Condition for both dependent variables: number of different target actions, F(6,174) = 9.70, p < .001, and number of different pairs of actions in the target order, F(6,174) = I 1.83, p < .001. To pursue the interactions, separate one-way analyses of variance were conducted for each sequence type, for both dependent variables. For all three sequence types and for both dependent variables, there were significant main effects of Recall Condition. For each sequence type, the main effects were examined further using Tukey tests. The Tukey tests revealed that the locus of the effects differed in the three sequence types. The different patterns of significance are discussed as follows.

In the novel-arbitrary condition, there was a significant main effect for the number of different target actions, F(3,87) = 3.28, p < .05, and for the number of different pairs of actions in the target order, F(3,87) = 4.00, p < .01. For both dependent variables, the only significant difference between means in the four recall conditions was between measures of delayed recall and measures of relearning. Thus, subjects showed virtually no immediate recall and no delayed


recall of the elements of the novel-arbitrary event or their position in the sequence. They showed an increase in performance only after the second modeling at Session II.

The subjects' difficulty with the novel-arbitrary task cannot be attributed entirely to its novelty because a different pattern of performance was evident in the novel-causal condition. In the novel-causal condition, there was a significant main effect for the number of different target actions, F(3,87) = 51.16, p < .001, and for the number of different pairs of actions in the target order, F(3,87) = 51.42, p < .001. Significant differences between level of baseline performance and measures of immediate recall provided clear evidence of subjects' immediate recall of both the elements of the event and their order in the sequence. Significant differences between level of baseline performance and measures of delayed recall provided clear evidence of subjects' abilities to re- member both the elements of the event and their order in the sequence even over the 6-week between-session interval. Finally, significant differences between the level of immediate recall and measures of relearning provided evidence of significant additional learning of both the elements of the event and their order in the sequence.

The subjects showed yet a third pattern of recall of the familiar sequence. In the familiar sequence condition there were, again, significant main effects for the number of different target actions, F(3,87) = 14.90, p < .001, and for the number of different pairs of actions in the target order, F(3,87) = 8.31, p < .001. Significant differences between levels of baseline performance and measures of immediate recall, delayed recall, and relearning provided clear evidence that subjects were able to recall both the elements of the event and their position in the sequence. Measures of immediate recall, delayed recall, and relearning were not significantly different from one another. Thus, subjects were able to maintain their initial postmodelling level of performance over the 6-week between-session interval, both prior to and after modelling.

DISCUSSION

In the present study, the 17.5- to 23.0-month-old subjects demonstrated the ability to imitate familiar sequences of events and novel sequences of events characterized by causal or enabling relations among items. They were able to imitate the sequences in their modelled order and to demonstrate significant recall of the events after a lengthy delay. The subjects did not demonstrate this ability for a novel sequence of events which lacked causal or enabling relations among items. It is important to note that the subjects' lower performance in the novel-arbitrary condition cannot be attributed to any observable difference in level of involvement with the props. That is, the subjects manipulated the props used in the arbitrary sequence as much as they did in the other two conditions. In fact, their manipulations resulted in many potentially scorable behaviors; for


example, treating the stacking ring as a bail and "batting" it with the dowel stick. However, their manipulations did not result in production of the targeted behaviors.

There are, however, two methodological issues which could have influenced the results but which, we will argue, do not substantially alter the basic outcome of the study. First, the tasks were administered in a standard order, so that differences in mean level of performance in the tasks could be affected by practice or fatigue effects. However, the mean level of targeted performance was lowest in the novel-arbitrary sequence, which was always presented between the other two. This argues against a practice or fatigue effect. Further, the argument pertains to the main effects of Sequence Type and not the more interesting and important interactions of Sequence Type and Recall Condition.

Second, the familiar sequence had a greater number of elements, making a higher possible score in that task. This would be a matter of concern if performance on this task had been higher than the other two. In fact, production of the familiar sequence was similar to the causal sequence, and was even sometimes (nonsignificantly) lower. Also, again, the argument pertains to task main effects and is less applicable to the interactions.

There are three aspects of the results which are particularly noteworthy. First, with regard to subjects' immediate recall abilities, the data reported here stand in contrast to those recently reported by O'Connell and Gerard (1985). O'Connell and Gerard also employed an elicited-imitation technique to obtain information about subjects' immediate recall of event sequences. Their data indicated little or no ability on the part of 20-month-olds to reproduce the modelled order of events. Twenty-four-month-olds were able to reproduce the modelled order of sequences only when the sequences were presented in their canonical order and, thus, when they were familiar to the subjects. O'Connell and Gerard argued that children's early ability to use temporai order as a guide to recall rests upon familiarity with the events.

In the present study, the 17.5- to 23.0-month-old subjects were able to reproduce the novel sequence that was characterized by causal relations among its components. Thus, it cannot be familiarity alone that influences young children's ability to use temporal information to order recall. On the contrary, the data from the present study provide support for the position that information about the order of a sequence is encoded in children's initial representations of at least some types of events (Nelson & Gruendel, 1986). It is likely that certain aspects of the procedure used by O'Connell and Gerard (1985) made the task too difficult for their youngest subjects. We will discuss three aspects of their procedure which may have contributed to the overall difficulty of the task. First, O'Connell and Gerard used many sequences that consisted of scrambled and reversed orders of familiar events. As they pointed out, "This high density of unfamiliar orderings may have taxed children's tolerance and reduced their overall level of performance" (p. 680). On the basis of the current data, we would argue that the


critical feature probably was not the lack of familiarity of the sequences but rather, their counterconventional nature that contributed to the subjects' overall lower performance.

A second aspect of the procedure used by O'Connell and Gerard (1985) was that in one-half of the event sequences, the central figure, a teddy bear, was the recipient of the action, whereas in the other half of the event sequences, it was the agent of action. In general, children do not attribute agency to dolls or other passive agents until about 22 to 24 months of age (See McCune-Nicolich, 1981, for a review). Bretherton (1984) has argued that there might be a trade-off between the complexity of the role that a child can represent and the complexity of the actions in which they can engage: " . . . a child might be able to represent two interacting roles (making a big bear kiss a small bear), provided sequencing was not also required" (p. 22). Thus, although very few of even the oldest children used the bear as agent (O'Connell, November, 1986, personal commu- nication), this manipulation probably contributed to the overall level of difficulty of the task.

Finally, in O'Connell and Gerard's (1985) procedure, the subjects saw both the canonical and reverse-order presentations of the same event in a single session. Presentation of the canonical and reverse-order versions of the sequences was counterbalanced so that one-half of the time the subjects saw the canonical version first and one-half of the time they saw the reverse-order version first. Although we know of no direct assessment of the effects on sequencing ability of contradictory order information provided within a session, it is entirely reasonable that the inconsistent order information had a proactive inter- ference effect on subjects' performance. Any one of the three procedural aspects discussed may have had no detrimental effect on performance; in combination, they may have significantly depressed subjects' abilities to demonstrate immediate, temporally ordered, event recall. Thus, it is likely that the data reported by O'Connell and Gerard represent an overly conservative estimate of the abilities of their youngest subjects.

The second noteworthy finding from the present study is the evidence of long- term recall in this sample of 17.5- to 23.0-month-old children. Comparison of levels of premodeling performance at Sessions I and II provides clear evidence for this conclusion. In the novel-causal and familiar conditions, subjects' premodelling interactions with the props clearly differed at the two sessions. Their premodelling performance at Session II included many more instances of the target behaviors than had their premodelling Session I performance. Thus, production of the target behaviors and sequences prior to modelling at Session II was not merely what the children would do with the props spontaneously. Rather, it indicates that the subjects had encoded the event sequences at Session I and were recalling aspects of them 6 weeks later at Session II.

Other investigators have provided evidence of long-term recall by children in this age range and even younger. For example, Ashmead and Perlmutter (1980)


provided accounts from parental diaries of memories for specific people, places, and object locations from children as young as 7 months of age. Nelson and Ross (1980) reported the results of a diary study of children between 21 and 27 months of age. The memory diaries contained evidence of children's recall for specific episodes and events that had taken place as much as I year previously. In an extensive study of the crib speech of one 21-month-old girl, Nelson (1984) relayed examples of recall of information about novel episodes and routine events, experiences which had occurred the same day, within a week, or months earlier. These examples provide evidence of long-term recall by very young children for both familiar and novel events. However, to the best of our knowledge, the present study is the first report in the literature of long-term ordered recall for specific, modelled event sequences by children in this age range. What is particularly remarkable is the level of subjects' delayed recall for a sequence of events they had experienced only once before, namely, the making of a "ra t t le ."

Finally, the results of the present study provide support for Mandler's (1986) argument that the nature of the relations among items in a sequence will influence subjects' learning and retention of them. Both factors hypothesized to affect the organization of events (familiarity and type of ordering relation) influenced subjects' recall performance. That is, the subjects demonstrated an ability to use temporal information in their recall of a familiar sequence and also a new sequence that was causally organized. In contrast, subjects showed virtually no learning at Session I of a new sequence characterized by arbitrary temporal relations, and they showed virtually no delayed recall of it at Session II.

We believe that the present research constitutes an important step in the study of children's abilities to represent events in the world. We have provided evidence that 17.5- to 23.0-month-old subjects are able to make appropriate use of temporal information to guide their immediate and delayed recall of events with which they are familiar as well as some kinds of events which are new to them. Two factors seem to influence the ability to organize the components of an event into a temporally ordered sequence. Familiarity with an event contributes to its organization; the repeated experience of the elements of a sequence in an invariant temporal order provides a stable core around which the elements are organized. In addition, causal or enabling connections among the parts provide for a more coherent organization of the elements and their order than do arbitrary temporal relations.

R E F E R E N C E S

Ashmead, D., & Perlmutter, M. (1980). Infant memory in everyday life. In M. Perlmutter (Eel.), New directions for child development: Children's memory (pp. l- 16). San Francisco: Jossey- Bass.

Bretherton, I. (1984). Representing the social world in symbolic play: Reality and fantasy. In I. Bretherton (Ed.), Symbolic play: The development of social understanding (pp. 3-41 ). Orlan- do, FL: Academic.


Fenson, L., & Ramsay, D. (1980). Decentration and integration of the child's play in the second year. Child Development, 51, 171-178.

Fivush, R., & Mandler, J. (1985). Developmental changes in the understanding of temporal sequence. Child Development, 56, 1437-1446.

Hudson, J., & Nelson, K. (1983). Effects of script structure on children's story recall. Developmen- tal Psychology, 19, 625-635.

Mandler, J. (1986). The development of event memory. In F. Klix & H. Hagendorf (Eds.), Human memory and cognitive capabilities--mechanisms and performance (pp. 459-467). North- Holland: Elsevier Science Publishers.

McCune-Nicolich, L. (1981). Toward symbolic functioning: Structure of early pretend games and potential parallels with language. Child Development, 52, 785-797.

Nelson, K. (1984). The transition from infant to child memory. In M. Moscovitch (Ed.), Infant memory: Its relation to normal and pathological memory in humans and other animals (pp. 103-130). New York: Plenum.

Nelson, K., & Gruendel, J. (1986). Children's scripts. In K. Nelson (Ed.) Event knowledge: Structure and function in development (pp. 21-46). HiUsdale, N J: Erlbaum.

Nelson, K., & Ross, G. (1980). The generalities and specifics of long-term memory in infants and young children. In M. Perlmutter (Ed.), New directions for child development: Children's memory (pp. 87-101). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

O'Cormell, B., & Gerard, A. (1985). Scripts and scraps: The development of sequential understanding. Child Development, 56, 671-681.

Shore, C., O'Connell, B., & Bates, E. (1984). First sentences in language and symbolic play. Developmental Psychology, 20, 872-880.

Slackman, E., Hudson, J., & Fivush, R. (1986). Actions, actors, links, and goals: The structure of children's event representations. In K. Nelson (Ed.), Event knowledge: Structure and function in development (pp. 47-69). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

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Making a memorable event: Effects of familiarity and organization on young children's recall of action sequences