Department of Experimental Psychology, Regensburg University, Regensburg, Germany.
Psychon Bull Rev. 2010 Oct;17(5):704-9. doi: 10.3758/PBR.17.5.704.
A prominent theory of cognitive development attributes the poor performance that children show in many cognitive tasks to a general lack of inhibitory control. We tested this theory by examining children's inhibitory capabilities in retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF), a memory task in which selective retrieval of previously studied material causes forgetting of related, nonretrieved material. Such forgetting is often attributed to inhibitory control processes, which supposedly suppress the nonretrieved items' memory representation. We examined RIF in kindergartners, second graders, and adults, using both recall and recognition testing. Although all three age groups showed significant RIF in recall, only adults and second graders, but not kindergartners, showed RIF in recognition. Because inhibition-based RIF should be present in recall and recognition, these findings indicate that in adults and second graders, but not in kindergartners, RIF is mediated by inhibition. The results support the view of inefficient inhibitory processes in young children's cognition.
一种重要的认知发展理论认为，儿童在许多认知任务中的表现不佳归因于普遍缺乏抑制控制。我们通过检查儿童在提取诱发遗忘（RIF）中的抑制能力来检验这一理论，在 RIF 中，对先前学习材料的选择性提取会导致相关但未被提取的材料被遗忘。这种遗忘通常归因于抑制控制过程，这些过程据推测会抑制未被提取项目的记忆表征。我们使用回忆和识别测试，在幼儿园儿童、二年级儿童和成年人中检查了 RIF。尽管所有三个年龄组在回忆中都表现出明显的 RIF，但只有成年人和二年级儿童，而不是幼儿园儿童，在识别中表现出 RIF。由于基于抑制的 RIF 应该存在于回忆和识别中，因此这些发现表明，在成年人和二年级儿童中，但不在幼儿园儿童中，RIF 是由抑制介导的。研究结果支持了在幼儿认知中抑制过程效率低下的观点。
