Rovee-Collier Carolyn, Giles Amy
Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ 08854-8020, United States.
Behav Processes. 2010 Feb;83(2):197-206. doi: 10.1016/j.beproc.2009.11.013. Epub 2009 Nov 27.
The characteristics of memory in infants and adults seem vastly different. The neuromaturational model attributes these differences to an ontogenetic change in the basic memory process, namely, to the hierarchical maturation of two distinct memory systems. The early-maturing (implicit) system is functional during the first third of infancy and supports the gradual learning of perceptual and motor skills; the late-maturing (explicit) system supports representations of contextually specific events, relationships, and associations. An alternative model holds that the basic memory process does not change, but what infants and adults select to encode for learning does. This ontogenetic change in selective attention has been mistaken for an ontogenetic shift in the basic memory process. Over the last 25 years, evidence from transfer studies with developing rats and human infants has revealed that the first third of infancy is actually a period of exuberant learning that ends, not coincidentally, at the same age that the late-maturing memory system presumably emerges. This article reviews data from recent studies of sensory preconditioning, potentiation, associative chains, and transitive inference with human infants that support this conclusion-data for which the neuromaturational model cannot account. Fast mapping is a general learning mechanism that accounts for this evidence.
婴儿和成人的记忆特征似乎有很大不同。神经成熟模型将这些差异归因于基本记忆过程中的个体发育变化，即两种不同记忆系统的层级成熟。早熟（内隐）系统在婴儿期的前三分之一阶段发挥作用，支持感知和运动技能的逐步学习；晚熟（外显）系统支持对特定情境事件、关系和联想的表征。另一种模型认为基本记忆过程不变，但婴儿和成人选择编码用于学习的内容发生了变化。这种选择性注意的个体发育变化被误认为是基本记忆过程中的个体发育转变。在过去25年里，对发育中的大鼠和人类婴儿进行的迁移研究证据表明，婴儿期的前三分之一实际上是一个学习旺盛的时期，巧合的是，这个时期结束的年龄与晚熟记忆系统可能出现的年龄相同。本文回顾了近期对人类婴儿进行的感觉预适应、增强、联想链和传递性推理研究的数据，这些数据支持了这一结论——神经成熟模型无法解释这些数据。快速映射是一种普遍的学习机制，可以解释这些证据。
