Altered video task: a non-verbal measure of what-who-where recall in young children

This report aims to introduce, test and discuss a new method of measuring episodic memory in participants with highly restricted verbal abilities. Although an elicited/deferred imitation paradigm has already proposed a successful method of measuring this capacity in infants as young as 6 months old [Bauer, Patricia J. 2006. “Constructing a Past in Infancy: A Neuro-Developmental Account.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 10 (4): 175–181], it failed to include a measure of capacities crucial for episodic recall, that is: a sense of self, a sense of subjective time and autonoetic consciousness [Tulving, Endel. 2002. “Episodic Memory: From Mind to Brain.” Annual Reviews Psychology 53: 1–25]. We combined developmental and comparative approaches in the altered video task to allow for simultaneous measuring of episodic recall and autonoetic consciousness. Episodic recall was measured via presentation of non-modified and modified recordings of a personal past event after a 24-h delay. The 15-month-old infants were expected to watch the modified video significantly longer than the non-modified video, and so evince the differentiation between them. Alongside, the infants participated in a mirror-mark task (a standard measure of self-recognition) and in a real-time video task (a possible alternative for the mirror-mark task). Results for ‘what’ and ‘who’ were consistent with our expectations. All results, their implications and possible future directions are discussed.