Episodic Memory in Middle Childhood: Age, Brain Electrical Activity, and Self-Reported Attention

Middle childhood is a transitional period for episodic memory (EM) performance, as a result of improvements in strategies that are used to encode and retrieve memories. EM is also a skill continually assessed for testing in the school setting. The purpose of this study was to examine EM performance during middle childhood and its relation to individual differences in attentional abilities and in neurophysiological functioning. We examined self-reports of attention at 6, 7 and 8-years of age as well as parietal EEG recorded during baseline, memory task encoding, and memory task retrieval. Results indicate that child self-reports of attention predicted EM performance. Additionally, the difference from baseline to retrieval-related EEG activation contributed variance to EM performance. Results replicate other middle childhood studies showing a positive association between EM performance and attention while also suggesting that parietal EEG yields critical information regarding memory performance.