Hsu Vivian C, Rovee-Collier Carolyn, Hill Debra L, Grodkiewicz Jill, Joh Amy S
Department of Psychology, Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ 08854-8020, USA.
Dev Psychobiol. 2005 Jul;47(1):43-54. doi: 10.1002/dev.20071.
Exposing individuals to an isolated component (a prime) of a prior event alleviates its forgetting. Two experiments with 120 human infants between 3 and 18 months of age determined the minimum duration of a prime that can reactivate a forgotten memory and how long the reactivated memory persists. Infants learned an operant task, forgot it, were exposed to the prime, and later were tested for renewed retention. In Experiment 1, the minimum duration of an effective prime decreased logarithmically with age, but was always longer than the duration of a mere glance. In Experiment 2, the reactivated memory was forgotten twice as fast after a minimum-duration prime as after a full-length one, irrespective of priming delay and infant age. These data reveal that the minimum effective prime duration psychophysically equates the accessibility of forgotten memories. We conclude that priming is perceptually based with effects that are organized on a ratio (log) scale.
让个体接触先前事件的一个孤立成分（启动刺激）可减轻对该事件的遗忘。对120名3至18个月大的人类婴儿进行的两项实验确定了能够重新激活已遗忘记忆的启动刺激的最短持续时间，以及重新激活的记忆能持续多久。婴儿先学习一项操作性任务，然后遗忘该任务，接着接触启动刺激，随后接受再次记忆保持测试。在实验1中，有效启动刺激的最短持续时间随年龄呈对数下降，但始终长于仅仅瞥一眼的持续时间。在实验2中，无论启动延迟和婴儿年龄如何，经过最短持续时间启动刺激后重新激活的记忆遗忘速度是经过完整时长启动刺激后遗忘速度的两倍。这些数据表明，从心理物理学角度来看，最小有效启动刺激持续时间等同于已遗忘记忆的可及性。我们得出结论，启动刺激基于感知，其效果按比率（对数）尺度组织。
