Visiting the Doctor: Children's Knowledge and Memory.

In order to examine within-domain variations in children's knowledge of the events or materials to be remembered and corresponding differences in recall, a new procedure for studying the knowledge-memory linkage is introduced. To illustrate this approach, a sample of 5-year-olds was interviewed about their understanding of routine, pediatric examinations and the resulting normative data were related to the recall scores of other children who had participated in a study of memory for visits to the doctor. By calculating the proportion of children who nominated each feature of the physical examination (e.g., heart check, urine sample) in response to open-ended questions about what usually happens during a checkup, it was possible to compute “knowledge scores” for each component of the examination. Comparable “memory scores” for the examination features were obtained by reanalyzing previously obtained data of 3-, 5-, and 7-year-olds' immediate and delayed retention of specific well-child office visits. Correlations among knowledge scores and memory scores for the 5-year-olds were significant and increased somewhat as a function of length of the delay interval. For the 3- and 7-year-olds, the correlations between knowledge and memory were significant with one exception; however, these correlations were of a smaller magnitude and did not increase as a function of delay interval.