Can We Study Episodic-Like Memory in Preschoolers From an Animal Foraging Model?

Episodic-like memory (ELM) involves remembering the what, where, and when (WWW) of an event as a whole, and it can be studied behaviorally. In research regarding this type of memory with children,one experiment proposes a new task adapted from animal foraging studies. A task derived from a foraging model was presented its considers the characteristics required for ELM study in children and employs a single trial presented from an egocentric perspective to avoid memory consolidation. One study compared four-year-old children's choices after being trained with one or three trials using a hideand-seek task. The consequence size and retention interval between training and test were manipulated.Results showed that children chose the optimal outcome after an immediate or delayed test. The children's choices were conditional on the size of the consequences and the time at retrieval according to the Temporal Weighting Rule (Devenport & Devenport, 1994). The results were similar to those of animal studies and were consistent with a foraging memory model. In discussion, the advantages and limitations of the proposed task for the study of ELM in children are described and explained.