Spontaneous verbal recall: A new look at the mechanisms involved in episodic memory retrieval in young children

Research on event memory in early childhood is predominantly based on asking direct questions to the children. To respond to questions concerning past events, children will have to engage in strategic retrieval involving a deliberate and cognitively demanding search process. Hence, strategic retrieval has become a proxy for retrieval in general which is assumed to depend on the involvement of prefrontal cortex. However, spontaneous retrieval is an important, yet hitherto largely overlooked, alternative mode of retrieval that involves less cognitive effort. Spontaneous retrieval is based on simple associations often triggered by distinct cues in the context, and as such neither a result of questions asked nor of deliberate search strategies. Although most parents are likely to have experienced their children having spontaneous recollections, and even though involuntary memories—the ‘adult’ equivalent to spontaneous recall—have been studied extensively, surprisingly little is known from a scientific perspective about young children’s spontaneous memories. However, recently we have seen an upsurge in research on spontaneous memories in young children. We review recent evidence suggesting that (a) the same memories for past events can be accessed by different retrieval mechanisms, and (b) that spontaneous retrieval (in contrast to strategic) does not necessarily become less effective as we investigate younger individuals. These findings suggest that that spontaneous retrieval may be an ontogenetic forerunner of strategic retrieval of past events and thus an important component to a more complete understanding of the development of memory for past events.