Király Ildikó, Takács Szilvia, Kaldy Zsuzsa, Blaser Erik
Department of Cognitive Psychology, Eötvös Loránd University, Hungary.
Institute for Advanced Study, Central European University, Hungary.
Dev Sci. 2017 May;20(3). doi: 10.1111/desc.12398. Epub 2016 Feb 21.
The dominant view of children's memory is that it is slow to develop and is inferior to adults'. Here we pitted 4-year-old children against adults in a test of verbatim recall of verbal material. Parents read a novel rhyming verse (and an integrated word list) as their child's bedtime story on ten consecutive days. A group of young adults listened to the verse, matching the exposure of children. All participants subsequently performed a free-recall of the verse, verbatim. (Parents and young adults knew they would be tested; children did not.) Four-year-olds significantly outperformed both their parents and the young adults. There were no significant differences in the ability to recall the gist of the verse, nor the integrated word list, allaying concerns about differences in engagement or motivation. Verbatim recall of verse is a skill amenable to practice, and children, we argue, by virtue of the prominence of verse in their culture and their reliance on oral transmission, have honed this skill to exceed adults'.
关于儿童记忆的主流观点是，其发展缓慢且不如成年人。在此，我们让4岁儿童与成年人在一项对语言材料逐字回忆的测试中展开较量。家长连续十天给孩子读一篇新颖的押韵诗歌（以及一份整合的单词列表）作为睡前故事。一组年轻人听了这首诗歌，其接触程度与儿童相同。随后，所有参与者都对这首诗歌进行逐字自由回忆。（家长和年轻人知道他们会接受测试；儿童则不知道。）4岁儿童的表现明显优于他们的家长和年轻人。在回忆诗歌要点以及整合单词列表的能力方面没有显著差异，这消除了对参与度或动机差异的担忧。逐字回忆诗歌是一项适合练习的技能，我们认为，由于诗歌在儿童文化中的突出地位以及他们对口头传承的依赖，儿童已经将这项技能磨练得超过了成年人。
