Kail R
Child Dev. 1986 Aug;57(4):969-87. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8624.1986.tb00259.x.
3 experiments were conducted to study developmental change in the speed of cognitive processes. In Experiment 1, subjects ranging in age from 8 to 21 years were tested on a mental rotation task in which they judged whether pairs of letters presented at different orientations were identical or mirror images, and on a name retrieval task in which they judged if pairs of pictures were identical physically or had the same name. Increases with age in the speed of mental rotation and speed of name retrieval were both well described by exponential functions, and the rate of developmental change was comparable for the 2 tasks. Experiment 2 confirmed that age changes in rate of mental rotation are well described by an exponential function. Experiment 3 demonstrated, on a mental rotation task, a perfect correlation across conditions between children's mean response times and adults' mean response times for corresponding conditions. These results are interpreted as indicating that age differences in speed of processing are due, at least in part, to a central limiting mechanism that increases with age.
进行了3项实验来研究认知过程速度的发展变化。在实验1中，对年龄在8至21岁之间的受试者进行了两项测试，一项是心理旋转任务，即判断以不同方向呈现的字母对是相同的还是镜像的；另一项是名称检索任务，即判断图片对在物理上是否相同或具有相同的名称。心理旋转速度和名称检索速度随年龄增长均可用指数函数很好地描述，并且这两项任务的发展变化率相当。实验2证实，心理旋转速度的年龄变化可用指数函数很好地描述。实验3在一项心理旋转任务中表明，儿童在相应条件下的平均反应时间与成人在相应条件下的平均反应时间之间在各条件下存在完美的相关性。这些结果被解释为表明加工速度的年龄差异至少部分归因于一种随年龄增长的中枢限制机制。
