Boys Town National Research Hospital, Omaha, NE, USA.
Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, USA.
Mem Cognit. 2019 May;47(4):738-748. doi: 10.3758/s13421-018-0879-4.
As children mature, their ability to remember information improves. This improvement has been linked to changes in verbal control processes such as rehearsal. Rehearsal processes are thought to undergo a quantitative shift around 7 years of age; however, direct measurement of rehearsal is difficult. We investigated a measure of rehearsal ability in children and compared this measurement to serial recall performance in the presence of auditory distractors. Theories of auditory distraction effects in children rely upon a combination of attentionally based and serial-order-based processes (Elliott et al. in Journal of Memory and Language, 88, 39-50, 2016); the present work contributes to the understanding of auditory distraction effects by measuring both types of processes within one study. Children completed an individually adjusted serial-recall task with auditory distractors. To assess rehearsal, each child's proportionalized articulatory difference (PAD) score was calculated from performance on adaptive digit span tasks performed in quiet and under articulatory suppression (see also Jarrold & Citroën in Developmental Psychology, 49, 837-847, 2013). Attentional processes were measured in two ways: first, by using complex span tasks, and second, by children's vulnerability to disruption in the context of irrelevant sound. The results indicated that the rehearsal measure was significantly related to the auditory distraction effect, but this relation was isolated to the attentional-diversion component of the irrelevant-sound effect. The results provide preliminary evidence that children consume attentional resources during rehearsal. Moreover, irrelevant sound disrupts children's rehearsal not solely through automatic, obligatory conflict. Rather, irrelevant sound diverts children's attention, which prevents attentional resources from supporting rehearsal processes.
随着儿童的成熟，他们记忆信息的能力会提高。这种提高与言语控制过程（如复述）的变化有关。人们认为，复述过程在 7 岁左右会发生定量转变；然而，直接测量复述是很困难的。我们研究了一种测量儿童复述能力的方法，并将其与存在听觉干扰时的系列回忆表现进行了比较。儿童听觉干扰效应的理论依赖于注意力基础和序列顺序基础过程的结合（Elliott 等人，《记忆与语言杂志》，88，39-50，2016）；本工作通过在一项研究中测量这两种类型的过程，为理解听觉干扰效应做出了贡献。儿童完成了一项带有听觉干扰的个体调整的系列回忆任务。为了评估复述，从在安静和发音抑制下完成的自适应数字跨度任务中计算每个孩子的比例化发音差异（PAD）得分（另见 Jarrold 和 Citroën 在《发展心理学》，49，837-847，2013）。注意力过程通过两种方式进行测量：首先，使用复杂跨度任务，其次，通过儿童在无关声音背景下易受干扰的情况来测量。结果表明，复述测量与听觉干扰效应显著相关，但这种关系仅限于无关声音效应的注意力分散成分。结果初步表明，儿童在复述过程中会消耗注意力资源。此外，无关声音不仅通过自动的、强制性的冲突干扰儿童的复述。相反，无关声音会分散儿童的注意力，从而阻止注意力资源支持复述过程。
