@article{ref1,
title="Eye-closure increases children's memory accuracy for visual material",
journal="Frontiers in psychology",
year="2014",
author="Mastroberardino, Serena and Vredeveldt, Annelies",
volume="5",
number="",
pages="241-241",
abstract="Research shows that closing the eyes during retrieval can help both adults and children to remember more about witnessed events. In this study, we investigated whether the eye-closure effect in children is explained by general cognitive load, modality-specific interference, or a combination. 120 children (60 female) aged between 8 and 11 years viewed a 5-min clip depicting a theft and were questioned about the event. During the cued-recall interview, children either viewed a blank screen (blank-screen condition), kept their eyes closed (eye-closure condition), were exposed to visual stimuli (visual-distraction condition), or were exposed to auditory stimuli (auditory-distraction condition). Children in the blank-screen and eye-closure conditions provided significantly more correct and fewer incorrect responses about visual details than children in the visual- and auditory-distraction conditions. No advantage was found for auditory details. These results support neither a pure cognitive-load explanation (in which the effect is expected to be observed for recall of both visual and auditory details), nor a pure modality-specific account (in which recall of visual details should only be disrupted by visual distractions). Practical implications of the findings are discussed.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="1664-1078",
doi="10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00241",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00241"
}