Department of Psychology, Rutgers University, Newark, NJ, USA.
Department of Psychology, Rutgers University, Newark, NJ, USA.
Cogn Psychol. 2021 Feb;124:101357. doi: 10.1016/j.cogpsych.2020.101357. Epub 2020 Nov 10.
Despite limited memory capacity, children are exceptional learners. How might children engage in meaningful learning despite limited memory systems? Past research suggests that adults integrate category knowledge and noisy episodic traces to aid recall when episodic memory is noisy or incomplete (e.g. Hemmer & Steyvers, 2009a,b). We suspect children utilize a similar process but integrate category and episodic traces in recall to a different degree. Here we conduct two experiments to empirically assess children's color category knowledge (Study 1) and recall of target hue values (Study 2). In Study 1, although children's generated hue values appear to be noisier than adults, we found no significant difference between children and adult's generated color category means (prototypes), suggesting that preschool-aged children's color categories are well established. In Study 2, we found that children's (like adult's) free recall of target hue values regressed towards color category means. We implemented three probabilistic memory models: one that combines category knowledge and specific target information (Integrative), a category only (Noisy Prototype) model, and a target only (Noisy Target) model to computationally evaluate recall performance. Consistent with previous studies with older children (Duffy, Huttenlocher, & Crawford, 2006), quantitative fits of the models to aggregate group-level data provided strong support for the Integrative process. However, at the individual subject level, a greater proportion of preschoolers' recall was better fit by a Prototype only model. Our results provide evidence that the integration of category knowledge in episodic memory comes online early and strongly. Implications for how the greater reliance on category knowledge by preschoolers relative to adults might track with developmental shifts in relational episodic memory are discussed.
尽管儿童的记忆容量有限，但他们却是出色的学习者。那么，儿童是如何在记忆系统有限的情况下进行有意义的学习的呢？过去的研究表明，当情景记忆存在干扰或不完整时，成年人会整合类别知识和嘈杂的情景记忆痕迹来辅助回忆（例如，Hemmer 和 Steyvers，2009a，b）。我们推测儿童也会使用类似的过程，但在回忆中整合类别和情景记忆痕迹的程度不同。在这里，我们进行了两项实验来实证评估儿童的颜色类别知识（研究 1）和目标色调值的回忆（研究 2）。在研究 1 中，尽管儿童生成的色调值似乎比成年人更嘈杂，但我们发现儿童和成年人生成的颜色类别均值（原型）之间没有显著差异，这表明学龄前儿童的颜色类别已经建立得很好。在研究 2 中，我们发现儿童（与成年人一样）对目标色调值的自由回忆回归到颜色类别均值。我们实施了三个概率记忆模型：一个结合类别知识和特定目标信息的模型（整合模型）、一个仅类别模型（嘈杂原型模型）和一个仅目标模型（嘈杂目标模型），以便对回忆表现进行计算评估。与对年龄较大的儿童进行的先前研究一致（Duffy、Huttenlocher 和 Crawford，2006），模型对总体数据的定量拟合为整合过程提供了强有力的支持。然而，在个体主体水平上，更多的学龄前儿童的回忆更符合仅原型模型。我们的结果提供了证据，表明情景记忆中类别知识的整合是早期且强大的。讨论了与学龄前儿童相对于成年人更多地依赖类别知识相关的发展性转变对情景记忆关系的影响。
