Department of Psychology, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand.
Dev Psychobiol. 2013 Mar;55(2):125-32. doi: 10.1002/dev.21004. Epub 2011 Dec 27.
Episodic memory endows us with the ability to reflect on our past and plan for our future. Most theorists argue that episodic memory emerges during the preschool period and that its emergence might herald the end of childhood amnesia. Here, we show that both 3- and 4-year-old children form episodic memories, but that 3-year-old children fail to retain those memories following a delay (Experiments 1 and 2). In contrast, 4-year-old children retained episodic memories over delays of 24 hr (Experiment 1) and 1 week (Experiment 3). This marked change in the retention of episodic memories between 3 and 4 years of age suggests that it is our ability to retain, rather than to form, an episodic memory that limits our ability to recall episodes from early childhood.
情景记忆使我们能够反思过去并规划未来。大多数理论家认为，情景记忆出现在学前阶段，它的出现可能标志着儿童期健忘的结束。在这里，我们表明，3 岁和 4 岁的儿童都形成了情景记忆，但 3 岁的儿童在延迟后无法保留这些记忆（实验 1 和实验 2）。相比之下，4 岁的儿童可以在 24 小时（实验 1）和 1 周（实验 3）的延迟后保留情景记忆。3 岁和 4 岁之间情景记忆保留能力的显著变化表明，限制我们回忆童年早期事件的能力的是我们保留情景记忆的能力，而不是形成情景记忆的能力。
