Fagen J W, Ohr P S, Fleckenstein L K, Ribner D R
Child Dev. 1985 Dec;56(6):1584-92.
The influence of crying on infants' long-term memory for a learned response was investigated in 3 experiments. In each, infants were trained to move a crib mobile containing 10 identical objects by means of kicking and were then exposed to a reinforcer containing only 2 of these components. This shift in component numerosity produced crying in 53% of the infants. Infants who cried in response to the reward shift evidenced no retention of the contingency 1 week later (Experiment 1) but did have excellent retention at 1 day (Experiment 2). In Experiment 3, a brief reactivation treatment alleviated forgetting at 3 weeks regardless of the presence of crying in response to the change in mobiles. An unexpected recency effect characterized the efficacy of the reactivation treatment. The results indicate that crying in response to the violation of a reward-expectation habit functions as an amnesic agent to produce accelerated forgetting.
通过3个实验研究了哭泣对婴儿所学反应的长期记忆的影响。在每个实验中，训练婴儿通过踢动来移动一个装有10个相同物体的婴儿床活动挂饰，然后让他们接触一个仅包含其中2个组件的强化物。组件数量的这种变化导致53%的婴儿哭泣。因奖励变化而哭泣的婴儿在1周后没有表现出对这种关联性的记忆（实验1），但在1天时确实有很好的记忆（实验2）。在实验3中，一种短暂的重新激活处理减轻了3周时的遗忘，无论婴儿对活动挂饰变化的反应中是否有哭泣。重新激活处理的效果呈现出一种意外的近因效应。结果表明，因违背奖励期望习惯而哭泣起到了遗忘剂的作用，导致加速遗忘。
