Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get at the Essence of Cognitive Growth?
Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get at the Essence of Cognitive Growth?
复制标题
DOI：
10.1177/1745691615621279
复制
发表时间：
2016-03
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
Cowan N
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Cowan N
我们对认知发展的理论和实践理解取决于工作记忆，即语言处理和解决问题等日常活动暂时可访问的有限信息。在这里，我评估了工作记忆性能随着发育而提高的许多可能原因。乍一看文献会让人产生一种奇怪的印象，即工作记忆能力在婴儿期达到了成人的水平，但在童年时期却退化了。为了代替这种不太可能的猜测，我考虑了如果人们忽视了婴儿研究与成人类任务相比所提供的支持，那么婴儿研究可能会导致能力的高估。还考虑了在学期间工作记忆的进一步发展。各种混杂因素使许多研究人员怀疑工作记忆容量在婴儿期后可能保持不变。这些因素包括知识的发展增长、过滤掉不相关的干扰、编码和排练策略以及模式形成。不过，在控制了所有这些因素的情况下，工作记忆在学年期间仍然会有所改善。建议进行研究以弥合婴儿和儿童发展研究之间的差距，了解工作记忆中注意力的集中和控制及其发展方式，并查明能力的本质及其从婴儿期开始的发展。
Our theoretical and practical understanding of cognitive development depends on working memory, the limited information temporarily accessible for such daily activities as language processing and problem-solving. Here I assess many possible reasons why working memory performance improves with development. A first glance at the literature leads to the weird impression that working memory capacity reaches adult-like levels during infancy but then regresses during childhood. In place of that unlikely surmise, I consider how infant studies may lead to overestimates of capacity if one neglects supports that the tasks provide, compared to adult-like tasks. Further development of working memory during the school years is also considered. Various confounding factors have led many investigators to suspect that working memory capacity may be constant after infancy; the factors include developmental increases in knowledge, filtering out of irrelevant distractions, encoding and rehearsal strategies, and pattern formation. With each of these factors controlled, though, working memory still improves during the school years. Suggestions are made for research to bridge the gap between infant and child developmental research, to understand the focus and control of attention in working memory and how they develop, and to pinpoint the nature of capacity and its development from infancy on.