Geurten Marie, Willems Sylvie, Germain Sophie, Meulemans Thierry
Department of Psychology: Cognition and Behaviour, Neuropsychology Unit, University of Liège, Belgium.
Psychological and Speech Therapy Consultation Centre (CPLU), University of Liège, Belgium.
Br J Dev Psychol. 2015 Nov;33(4):405-10. doi: 10.1111/bjdp.12114. Epub 2015 Sep 2.
This study examined whether young children are influenced by the subjective experience associated with an easy or difficult recall when making memory decisions. Seventy-one children, aged 4, 6, and 8 years, were asked to generate either a small (easy condition) or large (hard condition) number of first names. Statistical analyses revealed that participants in the hard condition were more likely to infer that they did not know many names than participants in the easy condition, contrary to what would be expected if children based their memory judgement on the objective number of recalled items. Overall, our results support the hypothesis that children as young as 4 years old rely on the subjective experience of ease to regulate their decision-making processes. Theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.
本研究考察了幼儿在做出记忆决策时是否会受到与容易或困难回忆相关的主观体验的影响。研究人员要求71名4岁、6岁和8岁的儿童分别说出少量（容易条件）或大量（困难条件）的名字。统计分析表明，与基于回忆项目的客观数量进行记忆判断的预期相反，困难条件下的参与者比容易条件下的参与者更有可能推断自己不知道很多名字。总体而言，我们的结果支持了这样一个假设，即4岁的儿童就依靠轻松的主观体验来调节他们的决策过程。本文讨论了这些发现的理论意义。
