Research proposal
To explore whether children of varied early age groups have different memory skills compared to later age groups.
Rationale for the study
Childhood memory skills are important for further development in our lives. The main role in this memory development takes place in our brain. Children develop their memory at an early stage because of fast brain development. At this stage children start to show better planning abilities as well. They can start to think in the sequence and they are able to plan ahead. The ability to recall an act is developed at this stage also. With growth this ability slowly improves. Children imitate role play from their caregiver until a child is able to perform the activity without help or prompts.
Elicit imitation was used to compare children's age 18, 24 and 30 months on their ability to recall a variety of tasks without any delays or mistakes. The main hypothesis is that the children in later age category have a better ability to recall tasks compared to children in an earlier age category.
Haden at al. (2009) study was used as a basis for this present study. Haden at al. study was to explore Elicit Imitation tasks and also work on memory location; finding hidden objects and learning new language skills. This present study aims to explore and compare Elicit Imitation tasks and to find the relationship between a child's age and performance to recall sequences and language skills.
Elicited Imitation tasks are used in teaching children memory skills (Bauer, 2006). Memory is an important process where our information gets processed, stored and later retrieved. Elicited Imitation is part of the working memory and the study tasks for the children and will be based on visual-spatial sketchpad (Baddeley, 2000). Recall memory is also used to retrieve previous tasks and learned information. For example, children will be asked to re-produce a set of actions which had been shown to them previously without a delay between demonstration and reproducing the action. To asses an infant's memory recall we mostly use deferred imitation technique and elicited imitation technique. Deferred imitation technique shows that toddlers are able to recall sets of actions which were shown to them four months previously, this is when they are asked to perform this set of actions again. In Elicited imitation technique, which is very like the previous technique, with the difference being that toddler demonstrates the performance immediately without delay. In this technique the toddler can recall the performance task again twelve months later (Meltzoff, 1995).
Children's memory emerges at different developmental stages and the task performance is based on recall performance. Children's working memory uses remembering points to reproduce demonstration of tasks shown to them by the examiner. Children can remember the task points after a certain delay of performance. As a child gets older their memory performance improves when their performance tasks can have longer periods between tasks to recall (Bauer, 2000).
The study above indicates the main hypothesis describing the development of children's early memory skills.
1. Children in early stage of 13 - 24 months have the ability to recall tasks with - 5 steps sequence performance observed in early stages. For example; putting a doll in the car and taking her for a ride, taking the doll out of the car and placing her on a chair, serving her a piece of cake with the doll eating the cake (Bauer, Hertsgaard, & Dow, 1994).
2. Task sequences which are delayed for more than six weeks and are able to be performed without repeated observation. For example; picnic performance in steps: spread blanket, put a teddy bear on the blanket, cut the cake and place the cake on a plate and feeding the bear with the cake (Bauer, 1996).
The Haden et al (2009) study is concerned with the valence hypothesis and proposes the processing of children's early memory skills at different stages of early age. The research investigated the response of task performance in each developmental stage with different tasks performance, by increasing the number of steps performed depending on the age and the delay of task recall performance. Their hypothesis was that children would recall each steps of performance after a delay with minimal or no mistakes when recalled. They found that the number of performed activities and pairs of activities done at each stage of age reflected the age difference and higher levels of skills of immediate and delayed performance, this was observed by 24 and 30 months age children compared with 18 months of assessment. They concluded that they found an advanced maturity of the children in different and elicited imitation age groups depending on the ability of increased task steps related to the difficulty and limited time of recall delays.
Attachment:- Development-psychology.docx