VERY LONG-TERM MEMORIES OF A SALIENT PRESCHOOL EVENT

Children who attended either a younger (mean age = 3 1/2 years) or an older (mean age = 4 1/2 years) preschool classroom were interviewed twice about an emergency school evacuation in response to a fire alarm. All children were able to answer some memory questions 2 weeks after the evacuation occurred, but the memory narratives produced by older preschool children showed a more refined knowledge of the temporal and causal sequence of events. Seven years later, memory of the fire alarm was reassessed. Only those preadolescents who had been in the older preschool group at the time of the alarm showed convincing evidence of long-term memory. The offset of childhood amnesia appears to be influenced by developmental changes in cognitive processing.