Department of Psychology, Emory University.
J Exp Psychol Gen. 2019 Apr;148(4):739-762. doi: 10.1037/xge0000581.
The current research was an investigation of the cognitive correlates of individual differences in participants' capacity to derive new factual knowledge through integration of information acquired across separate yet related learning episodes. In a sample of 117 adults (Experiment 1) and 57 children aged 8 to 10 years (Experiment 2), we investigated the respective roles of verbal comprehension, working memory span, and relational reasoning in self-derivation of new knowledge through memory integration. The findings revealed patterns of consistency and inconsistency in the cognitive profiles underlying this form of learning in adults and children. In both adults and children, verbal knowledge and skills accounted for variability in self-derivation. Variance in adults, but not in children, was further explained by working memory. Given that individual differences in self-derivation have implications for real-world academic outcome, we also investigated the association between self-derivation and academic performance. We found that performance on the experimentally based self-derivation paradigm was related to concurrent and longitudinal academic success in both samples. The present research thus builds on the growing body of behavioral and neuroscientific research to advance our understanding of the cognitive factors associated with behaviors that depend on memory integration in both childhood and adulthood and also provides suggestive evidence of critical ways in which the process may differ in children and adults. Together, the findings provide a theoretically plausible and practically significant framework from which to guide future research aimed at enhancing this educationally relevant learning phenomenon. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
本研究旨在探讨个体在通过整合跨独立但相关学习片段获得的信息来获取新知识的能力方面的差异的认知相关性。在 117 名成年人（实验 1）和 57 名 8 至 10 岁的儿童（实验 2）的样本中，我们调查了言语理解、工作记忆广度和关系推理在通过记忆整合自我推导新知识方面的各自作用。研究结果揭示了成人和儿童在这种学习形式的认知特征背后存在一致性和不一致性的模式。在成人和儿童中，言语知识和技能都可以解释自我推导的可变性。成人的方差，而不是儿童的方差，进一步由工作记忆解释。鉴于自我推导的个体差异对现实世界的学术成果有影响，我们还研究了自我推导与学业成绩之间的关联。我们发现，基于实验的自我推导范式上的表现与两个样本中的当前和纵向学业成功相关。因此，本研究扩展了行为和神经科学研究的不断增长的研究成果，以加深我们对与儿童和成人的记忆整合相关的行为相关的认知因素的理解，并且还提供了有关该过程在儿童和成人中可能存在差异的关键方式的有说服力的证据。这些发现为指导旨在增强这种具有教育意义的学习现象的未来研究提供了一个理论上合理且具有实际意义的框架。（PsycINFO 数据库记录（c）2019 APA，保留所有权利）。
