UC Irvine

Researchers interested in youth’s abilities to report on stressful and traumatic memories have conducted correlational and experimental studies to investigate the relation between stress and memory throughout childhood and adolescence. This meta-analysis was conducted to integrate findings from these studies and assess the relation between acute stress during an event and subsequent memory of that event in youth ages 3-17. After a comprehensive literature search, 177 correlations were retrieved from 28 independent studies. On average, across studies, stress was not significantly related to memory in youth [rz= -0.01, 95% PI (-.32, .30), p =0.66]. However, the ways in which stress was measured emerged as a significant moderator of the relation. Pairwise comparisons revealed marginally significant differences between physiological (rz= 0.06) and self-report (rz = -0.06) stress categories. Other moderators of stress and memory were also examined, however none of them achieved significance. Residual heterogeneity in the full model and limitations of the meta-analysis are discussed along with key takeaways.