Participation
The MemoryMaker Study (MeMa)
What is the study about?
In the MemoryMaker Study, we are investigating how children aged 4 to 10 years remember their everyday experiences over time. We know that young children are especially good at acquiring general knowledge, expanding their vocabulary, categorizing objects, and learning social rules early in life. However, the ability to recall specific events develops much more slowly. We aim to understand how children's memories of real-life events change over time and how these relate to memory performance measured in the lab.
What does participation involve?
We will accompany your child over a total of five years with four test appointments at 15-month intervals. Each annual test round consists of two blocks: the camera block and the laboratory block.
Camera block: Starting nine months before the sessions at the institute, you and your child will record everyday activities (e.g., a visit to the zoo or a picnic) with a small portable camera that your child will wear on their upper body:
After being turned on, the camera automatically takes photos every 3 seconds for 50 to 70 minutes. We will ask you to record 10 to 28 of these events in your child's life with cameras each year. You decide which photos you want to provide us with for research into your child's memory development! We follow comprehensive data protection guidelines when handling the photos. The camera photos are stored securely on our internal servers and shown exclusively to your child for the memory tasks in our study. The photos are not shared with third parties.
Laboratory block: Following the camera block, there will be four sessions at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development and one appointment for three-dimensional imaging of the brain using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) at Freie Universität Berlin. During the sessions, your child will play child-friendly memory games on the computer with one of our well-trained study staff members. Each session lasts about 75 to 90 minutes. During the last session, an MRI scan will be performed to measure your child's memory of these events using the camera photos.
How will you and your child benefit from participating?
You will be making an important contribution to a research project that investigates how real memories change during childhood development.
Your child will receive a small gift for each appointment they attend. The expense allowance is 13 euros per hour for both visits to the institute and for the camera recordings. In addition, there is a bonus of €5 for each appointment at the MPIB and at Freie Universität Berlin. If your child participates fully in each test appointment, they will receive a gift or voucher worth €15 at the end. If your child participates fully in all 5 years, we will give you your camera as a gift.
Age range: From 3 years and 3 months to 5 years and 2 months
Contact person: Dr. Zoe Ngo (Principial Investigator)
Email: raven@mpib-berlin.mpg.de
If you are interested, you can send us your contact information using this QR code. We will then contact you with further information about the MeMa study:
