Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

Young children often forget to do things in their daily lives. Whether a child forgets to wear their bicycle helmet or return homework, being able to remember to complete their future intentions (known as prospective memory) contributes to their developing independence from caregivers. Thus, prospective memory is a critical cognitive skill that allows children to gain autonomy from others. Prospective memory develops rapidly in the early childhood years, but young children are quite forgetful and often neglect to carry out their future intentions. The current research program will examine the role of self-reminding, external verbal reminders, and children's understanding of their own memory ability and memory strategies and the role they play in the ability to use verbal reminders to support prospective memory performance. This research will fill important gaps in our current understanding of children's prospective remembering. This research will have implications for parents, caregivers, and educators, as it will examine what affects children's prospective memory (in terms of types of reminders and when the reminders occur) and what cognitive abilities support successful remembering (specifically, self-reminding and whether knowledge of memory ability and strategies allow children to better capitalize on reminders). Further, this research will inform how caregivers and educators can encourage and foster children's prospective remembering by understanding the processes that support its development. The anticipated research outcomes will illuminate the role of self-reminding, external verbal reminders, and understanding of memory and memory strategies on children's ability to carry out a future intention. The field of children's prospective memory research is growing rapidly and adds to our complete understanding of children's memory development. This research program will add to our knowledge about the development of prospective memory, what factors contribute to its optimal development and performance, and the underlying mechanisms that support remembering one's future intentions. Most broadly, it will add to our understanding of children's early cognitive development.