TY - JOUR A1 - Aslan, Alp A1 - John, Thomas T1 - The development of adaptive memory: Young children show enhanced retention of animacy-related information JF - Journal of Experimental Child Psychology N2 - Previous developmental work has indicated that animacy is a foundational ontogenetic category that is given priority already early in life. Here, we investigated whether such priority is also present in children’s episodic memory, examining whether young children show enhanced retention of animacy-related information. Kindergartners and younger and older elementary school children were presented with fictitious (non)words (e.g., BULA, LAFE) paired with properties characteristic of humans (e.g., “likes music”), (nonhuman) animals (e.g., “builds nests”), and inanimate things (e.g., “has four edges”) and were asked to rate the animacy status of each nonword. After a retention interval, a surprise recognition test for the nonwords was administered. We found enhanced recognition of nonwords paired with human and animal properties compared with (the same) nonwords paired with inanimate properties. The size of this animacy advantage was comparable across age groups, suggesting developmental invariance of the advantage over the age range examined (i.e., 4–11 years). The results support a functional–evolutionary view on memory, suggesting that already young children’s memory is “tuned” to process and retain animacy. KW - Cognitive development KW - Evolutionary psychology KW - Episodic memory KW - Adaptive memory KW - Ancestral priorities KW - Mnemonic animacy advantage in children Y1 - 2021 UR - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2016.07.007 VL - 152 SP - 343 EP - 350 ER -