Psychology
Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2270
Browse
2 results
Search Results
Item Examining the co-development of episodic memory and hippocampal subfields – A longitudinal study(2020) Canada, Kelsey Leigh; Riggins, Tracy; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Episodic memory is a cornerstone ability that allows one to recall past events and the context in which they occur. Many different tasks have been used to assess the development of episodic memory during early childhood. Previous longitudinal work on individual tasks has noted accelerated changes from approximately 5 to 7 years, suggesting non-linear changes in memory ability during early childhood. However, the extent to which tasks relate to one another and are indicative of the latent construct of episodic memory is not known. Further, improvements in memory are thought to relate to underlying changes occurring in the functionally distinct subfields of the hippocampus (i.e., CA2-4/dentate gyrus (DG), CA1, and Subiculum) during this developmental period. This study examined changes in episodic memory ability, hippocampal subfield volume, and the relation between changes in episodic memory and volume of hippocampal subfields during early childhood (4 to 8 years) using longitudinal data and a structural equation modeling framework. Results suggest that episodic memory ability improves substantially during this period, with consistent improvements between 4 to 8 years. Further, there are robust increases in subiculum, CA1, and CA2-4/DG volume between 5 to 6 years of age. Finally, within this sample, there were relations between the development of hippocampal subfields and improvements on a single source memory task commonly used to assess episodic memory. Interestingly, this relation was most robust between subiculum and source memory. Overall, these results highlight the ability to use laboratory tasks to characterize developmental changes in episodic memory, highlight 5- to 6-years as a period of developmental change in hippocampal subfields, and further support a role of the hippocampus in supporting episodic memory.Item Relationships between Temperament, Emotion Understanding, and Social Competence in Early Childhood(2017) Verron, Heather; Teglasi, Hedwig; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Young children’s social competence is regarded as one of the strongest indicators of positive adjustment throughout the lifespan. As part of an effort to unpack its development, a large body of existing research has established relationships between temperamental factors and social competence, as well as between emotion understanding and social competence. However, studies that have examined these constructs have been laden with definitional disagreements and methodological issues, leaving the true magnitude and scope of the relationships difficult to discern. In addition, there has been very little research that has examined relationships between temperament and emotion understanding, although theory and research with clinical samples suggests there are likely links between the two. The current study thus aimed to add to the existing literature by examining temperamental factors, emotion understanding abilities, and social competence in concert. It was hypothesized that emotion understanding would mediate relationships between temperament and social competence. As expected, certain aspects of temperamental reactivity and self-regulation, as rated by both parents and teachers, correlated with preschoolers’ and kindergarteners’ performance on emotion understanding tasks, which required them to identify emotions likely to be elicited by common social situations (emotion situation knowledge) and to offer explanations for why certain situations may be elicited by those social situations (emotion situation reasoning). Interestingly, performance on emotion situation reasoning tasks, but not emotion situation knowledge tasks, emerged as a significant mediator between temperament and social competence, regardless of temperament informant. Although further research is needed in this area, emerging patterns suggest a need to distinguish between children’s possession of rote knowledge of emotions and abilities to reason about them. Limitations of the study and implications for future research are also discussed.