Kail R
Department of Psychological Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907.
J Exp Child Psychol. 1988 Jun;45(3):339-64. doi: 10.1016/0022-0965(88)90036-7.
In Experiment 1, 8- to 21-year-olds were tested on a visual search task in which they determined whether a target digit was present in a set of one to five digits and a memory search task in which they determined whether a target digit was a member of a previously presented set of one to five digits. Increases with age in speeds of visual and memory search were both described well by exponential functions, and the rate of developmental change was similar for the two processes. In Experiment 2, 8- to 22-year-olds were tested on a memory search task, a mental rotation task in which they judged whether a stimulus presented in various orientations was a letter or a mirror image of a letter, an analogical reasoning task in which they judged whether sets of pictures were related to one another according to the same rule, and a mental addition task in which they judged the accuracy of problems such as 2 + 3 = 6. Here, too, for three of the four tasks developmental change was described well by exponential functions with a common rate of change. Results are interpreted in terms of a central mechanism that limits speeded performance and that changes with age.
在实验1中，对8至21岁的儿童进行了视觉搜索任务测试，即判断一组1至5个数字中是否存在目标数字，以及记忆搜索任务测试，即判断目标数字是否属于之前呈现的一组1至5个数字。视觉搜索和记忆搜索速度随年龄增长的情况均可用指数函数很好地描述，且这两个过程的发育变化速率相似。在实验2中，对8至22岁的儿童进行了记忆搜索任务、心理旋转任务（即判断以各种方向呈现的刺激是字母还是字母的镜像）、类比推理任务（即判断图片组是否根据相同规则相互关联）以及心理加法任务（即判断诸如2 + 3 = 6这类问题的正确性）的测试。同样，在这四项任务中的三项任务中，发育变化可用具有共同变化速率的指数函数很好地描述。结果是根据一种限制快速表现且随年龄变化的核心机制来解释的。
