Department of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China.
The First Affiliated Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou, China.
Nat Commun. 2024 May 14;15(1):4058. doi: 10.1038/s41467-024-48457-0.
Research on the development of cognitive selectivity predominantly focuses on attentional selection. The present study explores another facet of cognitive selectivity-memory selection-by examining the ability to filter attended yet outdated information in young children and adults. Across five experiments involving 130 children and 130 adults, participants are instructed to use specific information to complete a task, and then unexpectedly asked to report this information in a surprise test. The results consistently demonstrate a developmental reversal-like phenomenon, with children outperforming adults in reporting this kind of attended yet outdated information. Furthermore, we provide evidence against the idea that the results are due to different processing strategies or attentional deployments between adults and children. These results suggest that the ability of memory selection is not fully developed in young children, resulting in their inefficient filtering of attended yet outdated information that is not required for memory retention.
认知选择性的发展主要集中在注意力选择上。本研究通过考察儿童和成人过滤注意到但已过时信息的能力，探讨了认知选择性的另一个方面——记忆选择。在涉及 130 名儿童和 130 名成年人的五个实验中，参与者被指示使用特定信息完成任务，然后在惊喜测试中出乎意料地要求他们报告这些信息。结果一致表明存在一种发展性逆转现象，儿童在报告这种被注意但已过时的信息方面表现优于成人。此外，我们提供的证据排除了以下观点，即结果是由于成人和儿童之间不同的处理策略或注意力部署所致。这些结果表明，记忆选择的能力在幼儿中尚未完全发展，导致他们无法有效地过滤不需要保留记忆的被注意但已过时的信息。
