Wang Qi
Department of Human Development, Cornell University, MVR Hall, Ithaca, NY 14853-4401, USA.
Cognition. 2008 Jul;108(1):117-35. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2008.02.002. Epub 2008 Mar 18.
Knowledge of emotion situations facilitates the interpretation, processing, and organization of significant personal event information and thus may be an important contributor to the development of autobiographical memory. This longitudinal study tested the hypothesis in a cross-cultural context. The participants were native Chinese children, Chinese children from first-generation Chinese immigrant families in the U.S., and European American children. Children's developing emotion knowledge and autobiographical memory were assessed three times at home, when children were 3, 3.5, and 4.5 years of age. Children's emotion knowledge uniquely predicted their autobiographical memory ability across groups and time points. Emotion knowledge further mediated culture effects on autobiographical memory. The findings provide important insight into early autobiographical memory development, and extend current theoretical understandings of the emotion-memory interplay. They further have implications for the phenomenon of infantile amnesia and cross-cultural differences in childhood recollections.
对情绪情境的了解有助于对重要个人事件信息的解读、处理和组织，因此可能是自传体记忆发展的一个重要因素。这项纵向研究在跨文化背景下检验了这一假设。参与者包括中国本土儿童、来自美国第一代华裔移民家庭的中国儿童以及欧美儿童。在儿童3岁、3.5岁和4.5岁时，在家中对他们不断发展的情绪知识和自传体记忆进行了三次评估。儿童的情绪知识在不同群体和时间点上独特地预测了他们的自传体记忆能力。情绪知识进一步介导了文化对自传体记忆的影响。这些发现为早期自传体记忆的发展提供了重要的见解，并扩展了当前对情绪与记忆相互作用的理论理解。它们还对婴儿期遗忘现象以及童年回忆中的跨文化差异具有启示意义。
