Strategic self-initiated encoding in object-location memory in 8–10-year-old children

As children mature, they become more independent and responsible for their belongings. In the current study, we explored how children utilize acquired knowledge about the structure of natural scenes to select and memorize the locations of objects within scenes, an aspect of memory we termed self-initiated object-location memory. Twenty-four young adults and 24 children (aged 8–10 years) memorized the locations of pictures of real-world objects embedded in pictures of indoor scenes, under three encoding conditions: in the self-initiated condition, participants selected the locations of the objects they memorized; in the self-initiated and elaboration condition, participants selected the objects’ locations and elaborated on the strategies guiding their selections; and in the non-self-initiated condition, participants memorized locations selected by the computer and provided to them. Following a 30-minute delay, participants retrieved the locations of the objects they had encoded. The results showed similar accuracy levels across age groups, and comparable benefits from self-initiated encoding. Additionally, children relied on similar representations of natural scenes and used similar encoding strategies as adults, primarily placing objects based on spatial regularities and the objects’ function. However, compared to young adults, children relied more on the object’s function than on spatial regularities. Overall, the results demonstrate that by age 8, children use acquired knowledge to construct their environment in a way that benefits memory performance and supports their emerging independence.