Developmental Differences in Subjective Recollection and Its Role in Decision Making

We examined how subjective assessments of recollection guide decision making. Subjective recollection was dissociated from accuracy during a forced-choice recognition task. Distracters were either similar to targets (match condition) or to other studied, but untested items (nonmatch condition). We assessed 223 participants (112 males) across three experiments (137 White, 37 Asian-American, 7 African-American, 4 American-Indian, 32 mixed race, 6 undisclosed). In Experiment 1, 6- to 10-year-olds and adults (N = 119) were less accurate (d = 0.70), but more likely to claim subjective recollection and make memory selections in anticipation of a reward in the nonmatch condition (ds = 0.64-0.70). This pattern was eliminated in 6- to 7-year-olds when we limited the number of selections (Experiment 2, N = 52), but was replicated when we required the selections to be counted (Experiment 3, N = 52), underscoring the effects of decision complexity on children's self-reflections.