Kids have delayed remembering, study reveals

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As people age, so do their brain and memory function, which is why we tend to forget things. However, a new study to be published in the journal Psychological Science is claiming that children may remember information better a few days later than the day they first learned it, Science Daily reports.

The study was conducted by Vladimir Sloutsky, professor of psychology at Ohio State and director of the university's Cognitive Development Laboratory, and his colleagues. They analyzed 84 children with aged four and five from central Ohio preschools. The children were tasked to play a video game involving memory retention of associations between objects. A group played the game again later in the same day, and another group played the game the second time after 2 days. The study revealed that those who played it again after 2 days scored 20 percent higher than those who played again in the same day.

"We know from previous research that kids struggle to form complex associations in the moment, so we thought that with some time off and periods of sleep they might be able to do better, and it turned out that when they had time to absorb the information, they did better," said Kevin Darby, a doctoral student in psychology at the Ohio State University and co-author of the study

According to Sloutsky, the results "give us a window into understanding memory and, in particular, the issue of encoding new information into memory."

The Ohio State University News Room reports that according to Sloutsky, "First, we showed that if children are given pieces of similar information in close proximity, the different pieces interfere with each other, and there is almost complete elimination of memory. Second, we showed that introducing delays eliminates this interference."

This is the first study to document 2 different but related cognitive phenomena simultaneously, "extreme forgetting" and delayed remembering. Darby also explained, "An implication is that kids can be smarter than we necessarily thought they could be. They can make complex associations; they just need more time to do it."

"It seems surprising that children can almost completely forget what they just learned, but then their memories can actually improve with time," said Sloutsky.

Sloutsky added: "We've shown that it's possible for children's memories to improve with time, but it's not like we uncovered a method for super-charging how much they can remember."

He said that children can absorb child-sized information as long as they're given ample time, even if they seem to have forgotten it quickly.

"The takeaway message is that kids can experience extreme forgetting, and the counter-intuitive way to fight it is to let time pass," said Sloutsky.