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A Naturalistic Assessment of the Organization of Children's Memories Predicts Cognitive Functioning and Reading Ability
Author(s) -
Mota Natália Bezerra,
Weissheimer Janaína,
Madruga Beatriz,
Adamy Nery,
Bunge Silvia A.,
Copelli Mauro,
Ribeiro Sidarta
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
mind, brain, and education
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.624
H-Index - 35
eISSN - 1751-228X
pISSN - 1751-2271
DOI - 10.1111/mbe.12122
Subject(s) - psychology , reading (process) , cognition , theory of mind , cognitive psychology , developmental psychology , intelligence quotient , autobiographical memory , recall , linguistics , neuroscience , philosophy
To explore the relationship between memory and early school performance, we used graph theory to investigate memory reports from 76 children aged 6–8 years. The reports comprised autobiographical memories of events days to years past, and memories of novel images reported immediately after encoding. We also measured intelligence quotient ( IQ ) and theory of mind ( ToM ). Reading and Mathematics were assessed before classes began (December 2013), around the time of report collection (June 2014), and at the end of the academic year (December 2014). IQ and ToM correlated positively with word diversity and word‐to‐word connectivity, and negatively with word recurrence. Connectivity correlated positively with Reading in June 2014 as well as December 2014, even after adjusting for IQ and ToM . To our knowledge, this is the first study demonstrating a link between the structure of children's memories and their cognitive or academic performance.