Metamemory for involuntary autobiographical memories and semantic mind‐pops in 5‐, 7‐ and 9‐year‐old children and young adults

© 2022 The Authors. Child Development published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Society for Research in Child Development. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/In a cross‐sectional study, 5‐, 7‐, and 9‐year‐old‐children and adults (N = 144, 86 females, predominantly White U.K. sample of lower‐middle to middle‐class background) were interviewed about their experiences of involuntary autobiographical memories (IAMs) and semantic mind‐pops that come to mind unintentionally. Although some age differences emerged, the majority of participants in all age groups claimed familiarity with involuntary memories and provided examples from their own experience. Moreover, the self‐reported frequency of IAMs and mind‐pops was high, and reported IAMs usually referred to incidental environmental triggers, whereas reported mind‐pops did not. This age invariance highlights the ubiquity of involuntary memories across development and opens up interesting avenues for developmental research on involuntary memories and other spontaneous phenomena (e.g., mind‐wandering, future thinking).Peer reviewe