Brito Natalie, Barr Rachel
Department of Psychology, P.O. Box 571001, White-Gravenor Hall 306, Washington, DC, 200057.
Dev Psychobiol. 2014 Jul;56(5):1156-63. doi: 10.1002/dev.21188. Epub 2013 Dec 7.
Memory flexibility is a hallmark of the human memory system. As indexed by generalization between perceptually dissimilar objects, memory flexibility develops gradually during infancy. A recent study has found a bilingual advantage in memory generalization at 18 months of age [Brito and Barr [2012] Developmental Science, 15, 812-816], and the present study examines when this advantage may first emerge. In the current study, bilingual 6-month-olds were more likely than monolinguals to generalize to a puppet that differed in two features (shape and color) than monolingual 6-month-olds. When challenged with a less complex change, two puppets that differed only in one feature--color, monolingual 6-month-olds were also able to generalize. These findings demonstrate early emerging differences in memory generalization in bilingual infants, and have important implications for our understanding of how early environmental variations shape the trajectory of memory development.
记忆灵活性是人类记忆系统的一个标志。以在感知上不同的物体之间的泛化能力为指标，记忆灵活性在婴儿期逐渐发展。最近的一项研究发现，18个月大的婴儿在记忆泛化方面具有双语优势[布里托和巴尔[2012年]《发展科学》，第15卷，第812 - 816页]，本研究考察了这种优势可能最早何时出现。在当前研究中，与单语6个月大的婴儿相比，双语6个月大的婴儿更有可能将记忆泛化到在两个特征（形状和颜色）上不同的木偶上。当面临不太复杂的变化，即两个仅在一个特征——颜色上不同的木偶时，单语6个月大的婴儿也能够进行泛化。这些发现表明双语婴儿在记忆泛化方面早期就存在差异，并且对于我们理解早期环境差异如何塑造记忆发展轨迹具有重要意义。
