Perner J, Ruffman T
Department of Psychology, University of Salzburg, Austria.
J Exp Child Psychol. 1995 Jun;59(3):516-48. doi: 10.1006/jecp.1995.1024.
This research draws together Tulving's (1985) view on episodic memory and research on children's developing "theory of mind." Episodic memory, in its technical meaning given by Tulving, requires the autonoetic consciousness of having experienced remembered events, but developmental findings suggest that children cannot encode events as experienced before the age of about 4 or 5 years. Before this age they have insufficient understanding of what constitutes experience, specifically they do not reflect on the perceptual origin of their own knowledge. To demonstrate such a link children between 3 and 6 years were assessed for their understanding of the perceptual origin of their own knowledge on different "see-know tests," in particular a test assessing understanding that our senses inform only about certain aspects of the perceived objects. A significant association was found between passing see-know tests and free recall, which persisted even when cued recall and verbal intelligence are partialed out. These results are used to argue that between 3 to 6 years children develop the ability to remember events as experienced and that this development can explain adults' inability to have recollective experiences of childhood events before that age (childhood amnesia).
本研究将图尔文（1985年）关于情景记忆的观点与儿童发展“心理理论”的研究结合起来。按照图尔文赋予的专业含义，情景记忆需要对经历过的记忆事件有自我觉知意识，但发展研究结果表明，儿童在大约4、5岁之前无法像之前经历过那样对事件进行编码。在这个年龄之前，他们对构成经历的事物理解不足，具体而言，他们不会思考自身知识的感知来源。为了证明这种联系，对3至6岁的儿童进行了评估，以了解他们在不同的“看-知测试”中对自身知识感知来源的理解，特别是一项评估对我们的感官仅告知所感知物体某些方面的理解的测试。在通过看-知测试和自由回忆之间发现了显著关联，即使排除线索回忆和语言智力因素，这种关联依然存在。这些结果被用来论证，3至6岁的儿童发展出了将事件作为经历过的事情来记忆的能力，并且这种发展可以解释成年人无法对该年龄之前的童年事件有回忆性体验（童年失忆症）的现象。
