Reinstating Preschoolers' Memories

Effects of reinstatement were examined in 2½-year-olds' (Experiment 1) and 3½-year-olds' (Experiments 2 and 3) long-term retention. Children learned object-location pairings and, 3 weeks later, were provided with postevent information consistent with the originally acquired pairings. One week later (4 weeks since acquisition), children were given 4 test trials. Analyses based on the trace-integrity framework indicated that, regardless of age, reinstatement (a) improved children's long-term retention, (b) affected both forgetting and reminiscence, and (c) affected both storage and retrieval processes, in particular, inoculating memories against storage-related forgetting processes. Results were related to recent theories concerning the impact of postevent information on the reliability of storage and retrieval processes that mediate children's long-term recollections.