Optimal behavior in familiar and novel contexts depends on retrieval and consideration of past experiences. In adults, hippocampus supports retrieval of prior memories based on partially overlapping cues (Mack & Preston, 2016). Given that the hippocampus develops through childhood and adolescence (Keresztes et al., 2017), in the present research we investigated developmental differences in flexible memory retrieval during new experiences. Four-year-olds (N=15) and adults (N=20) learned a series of common object-novel shape associations. Following learning, participants were cued with a shape and tasked with retrieving the target object associate. On half of the trials, participants were cued with an identical shape from learning. On the remaining trials, participants were cued with a similar but non-identical shape morph, enabling examination of whether participants can flexibly generalize across similar but non-identical experiences to retrieve related memories. Accuracy and response times were measured for adults, and accuracy was measured for children. Both adults and children demonstrated reliable retrieval when cued with similar yet non-identical shapes. Whereas adults showed slower and less accurate retrieval for the non-identical versus identical cues, children showed no differences in retrieval as a function of cue similarity. These findings have important implications for our understanding of how mnemonic specificity and generalization interact across development. In particular, our findings suggest that mnemonic generalization in early childhood is a consequence of less detailed memory representation. Conversely, the more mature form of generalization evidenced in adulthood is accomplished through dual processing of the commonalities and specific differences between similar yet non-identical experiences.Neuroscienc
