Boyer M E, Barron K L, Farrar M J
Department of Psychology, University of Florida, Gainesville 32611, USA.
Memory. 1994 Dec;2(4):417-45. doi: 10.1080/09658219408258957.
Thirty-seven 3-year-old children, who had learned a 9-action event sequence ("making Play-Doh spaghetti") when they were 20 months old, returned to the lab to determine whether they would be able to verbally and/or behaviourally recall the event after a 12- to 22-month delay. Children originally participated in the event either one or three times and experienced different parts of the event either at three distinct locations (spatial condition) or at a single location (nonspatial condition). Results show very little evidence of long-term memory for the event after one to two years. Returning children did not verbally recall the event, and they did not perform more actions or sequence the event more accurately than controls, with the exception of the older experimental children who had a tendency to sequence the event more accurately than same-aged controls. Although the results indicate that young children's memory for novel events is not very enduring, there were individual differences in children's ability to remember the event. These differences are discussed in terms of potential differences in cognitive abilities and changing knowledge about retrieval strategies or memory.
37名3岁儿童在20个月大时学习了一个包含9个动作的事件序列（“制作培乐多彩泥意大利面”），他们回到实验室，以确定在间隔12至22个月后，他们是否能够通过言语和/或行为回忆起该事件。这些儿童最初参与该事件的次数为一次或三次，并且在三个不同地点（空间条件）或单一地点（非空间条件）体验了该事件的不同部分。结果显示，一到两年后，几乎没有证据表明对该事件存在长期记忆。回来参与实验的儿童没有通过言语回忆起该事件，并且除了年龄较大的实验组儿童比同龄对照组儿童更倾向于更准确地排列事件顺序外，他们在执行动作或更准确地排列事件顺序方面并不比对照组表现得更好。尽管结果表明幼儿对新事件的记忆不太持久，但儿童在记忆该事件的能力上存在个体差异。这些差异将从认知能力的潜在差异以及关于检索策略或记忆的知识变化方面进行讨论。
