Department of Psychology, University of Regina.
Department of Psychology, Thompson Rivers University.
Dev Psychol. 2019 Feb;55(2):263-273. doi: 10.1037/dev0000637. Epub 2018 Nov 8.
Executing actions in a specific order is a critical component of many action sequences that children must acquire, the majority of which are learned through observation and imitation of others. Although a wealth of evidence indicates that children can process and represent temporal order in memory, relatively little is known about the development of this ability and the cognitive mechanisms that support it in the context of imitation. The present research investigated 4- through 8-year-old children's ability to learn the temporal order of novel, arbitrary action sequences via imitation. On Day 1, children observed and imitated four instances each for two different multistep sequences. One sequence was easy and the other was difficult, in terms of categorizing the items used in each instance. For one sequence, the experimenter also performed one instance in a deviant temporal order, which occurred either early or late in learning. Memory generalization for each sequence was assessed on Day 2. Results indicated significant effects of age and sequence difficulty on children's ability to recall the individual actions as well as the standard order. Experiencing the deviant order also uniquely disrupted children's ability to generalize the order. Experiencing the deviant early in learning globally lowered children's memory for both sequences. Thus, children's ability to learn temporal order develops slowly over childhood, is supported by foundational cognitive processes that operate in a hierarchical fashion, and is highly sensitive to variable temporal input. These results have implications for theories of imitation and cultural learning more broadly. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
执行特定顺序的动作是许多儿童必须掌握的动作序列的关键组成部分，其中大多数都是通过观察和模仿他人来学习的。尽管有大量证据表明儿童可以在记忆中处理和表示时间顺序，但对于这种能力的发展以及在模仿背景下支持这种能力的认知机制，我们知之甚少。本研究调查了 4 至 8 岁儿童通过模仿学习新的、任意动作序列的时间顺序的能力。在第 1 天，孩子们观察并模仿了两个不同多步骤序列的每个序列 4 次。一个序列很简单，另一个序列很难，这是根据每个实例中使用的项目进行分类的。对于一个序列，实验者还以一种异常的时间顺序执行了一个实例，该实例要么出现在学习的早期，要么出现在学习的晚期。在第 2 天，对每个序列的记忆泛化进行了评估。结果表明，年龄和序列难度对儿童回忆单个动作以及标准顺序的能力有显著影响。体验异常顺序也会破坏儿童对顺序的泛化能力。在学习的早期体验异常顺序会全局降低儿童对两个序列的记忆。因此，儿童学习时间顺序的能力在整个童年时期都在缓慢发展，得到了以分层方式运作的基础认知过程的支持，并且对可变的时间输入非常敏感。这些结果对模仿和更广泛的文化学习理论具有重要意义。
