Developmental process in which young children come to understand the states of "knowing," "forgetting," and "remembering" in this order

Izumi Uehara^1,2*

• ¹Institute for Education and Human Development, Ochanomizu University, Bunkyō, Japan
• ²Department of Psychology, Ochanomizu University, Bunkyo, Japan

This study focused on examining young native Japanese children's linguistic understanding of words associated with awareness of one's memory, such as "know," "forget," and "remember," to explore the early developmental process of metamemory. To assess whether 4-, 5-and 6-year-olds understand these words, we created new tasks for "know" and "remember," and used a modified episodic task for "forget," adapted from Lockl and Schneider's (2006, 2007) question concerning the state of "placing something and forgetting it." A total of 114 children, with 38 children in each age group, participated in this study. More than 80% of the 6-year-olds understood the mental states of "knowing," "forgetting," and "remembering," whereas 4-year-olds did not. The performance of 5-year-olds fell between that of the 4-and 6-year-olds, with half failing to understand "remembering" and 30% failing to understand "forgetting." These findings indicate a developmental progression in understanding, in the order of "know," "forget," and "remember." The tasks developed in this study will contribute to future research on cognitive development, as well as to educational and support practices for young children.