For adults, processing the self-relevance of information facilitates encoding and recall. One important question is whether processing the relevance of information to close others might have similar neural correlates. To address this question, the present studies use fMRI and developmental methods. Study 1 demonstrates that when adults engage in self- and close other-referential processing there is substantial overlap in regions of medial prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate and posterior cingulate; there is also a region of anterior cingulate and medial prefrontal cortex in which self-referential processing recruits significantly greater activation. Study 2 shows that younger children recall more close other, mother words, whereas older children recall more self encoded words. Study 3 demonstrates that neurally, this difference in young versus older children is associated with activations in regions of the medial prefrontal cortex and medial orbital frontal cortex such that younger children who remember more mother words activate more medial prefrontal structures when processing mother words. Older children activate these same regions when processing words encoded with the self. These studies suggest that accessing representations of self and crucial close others such as one's mother in childhood leads to activation in many common brain regions, however, the representation that is most able to capture attention and memory resources is the representation that is most psychological salient at each developmental period. These findings suggest a flexible boundary between self- and close-other processing that develops over childhood.
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