A Systematic Exploration of when Elements of Episodic Memory Begin to Emerge in Young Children

对幼儿情景记忆元素何时开始出现的系统探索

• 批准号: 2743031
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Cambridge
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2022 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2743031
• 关键词: Systematic; Exploration; when; Elements; Episodic

There have been decades of research into the underlying mechanisms of episodic memory including its' emergence and ontogeny. Much of the early research into the emergence of episodic memory claims that it does not appear until around the age of 4 (e.g., Tulving, 2005). However, more recent research, using adapted measures of EM for even younger children, have found evidence for episodic memory present at 3 years (e.g., Bauer et al, 2013) and even by the 2nd year of infancy (Bauer & Leventon, 2013).A surface-level interpretation of these findings would merely imply that previous research illustrates uncertainties regarding the emergence of EM. However, these findings should not be considered in parallel with one another as they adopt the use of different tasks (e.g., picture sequence memory task and elicited imitation) and whilst these are known to be measures of EM, we must be careful to assume that they are measuring identical psychological processes. Furthermore, it may be the case that episodic memory does not fully emerge until the age of 4, however this is likely due to the gradual emergence and development of constituent cognitive abilities that contribute to complete episodic memory. Such discoveries only perpetuate the notion that episodic memory should be approached not as a unitary construct, but rather a multifaceted process. Implementing and using multiple assessments of episodic memory in a systematic manner can allow us to gain a greater understanding of when these different processes begin to emerge in earlier years and the trajectory at which they develop. This 'divide-and-conquer' design for assessing elements of EM (Cystal & Suddendorf, 2019) is particularly essential when working with pre- or early-verbal participants, as attempting to create a single, unified measure of wholistic EM may require complex levels of cognition and language abilities that have not yet been fully developed at this stage.If such a battery can be effectively developed for very young children, these assessments could then be adapted to test AI agents. A recent line of research, the Animal-AI testbed (Crosby et al., 2020), adopts a comparative cognition design, placing an AI agent in a 3D virtual environment where they can be tested on a range of cognitive tasks that have been previously successfully completed by animals. Notably, however, there remains to have been developed an assessment of the cognitive processes required for EM in AI agents, which could provide invaluable insight into the rapidly evolving work surrounding the integration of Artificial Intelligence into social and professional spheres.This brief outline of existing literature reveals two overarching lacunae that I aim to overcome in this project: a systematic ontogeny of episodic memory in infancy/early childhood, and the development of robust and valid assessments for testing elements of episodic memory in AI agents. As such, the research aims are as follows: 1) To implement existing, and develop novel, tests of EM culminating in a battery of assessments for very young children 2) To use the data on task performance to develop additional tests of EM for preverbal infants and AI agents This research will contribute to a comprehensive timeline of how cognition develops to culminate in full, reconstructive, episodic memory. A timeline of this evolvement of episodic-like cognition in young children would add novel insight to the knowledge base of EM emergence. The development of a medium through which to test episodic memory in artificial intelligence would also allow us to conduct the first direct human-AI comparison on this measure.

关于情景记忆的产生机制和个体发生机制的研究已经有几十年的历史。许多关于情景记忆出现的早期研究声称，情景记忆直到4岁左右才出现（例如，Tulving，2005）。然而，最近的研究，使用适应性的EM测量更年幼的儿童，已经发现了3岁时存在情景记忆的证据（例如，Bauer et al，2013），甚至到婴儿期的第二年（Bauer & Leventon，2013）。对这些发现的表面解释仅仅意味着以前的研究说明了关于EM出现的不确定性。然而，这些研究结果不应被视为彼此平行，因为它们采用了不同的任务（例如，图片序列记忆任务和诱发模仿），虽然这些都是已知的EM的措施，我们必须小心地假设，他们正在测量相同的心理过程。此外，情景记忆可能在4岁之前不会完全出现，但这可能是由于有助于完整情景记忆的组成认知能力的逐渐出现和发展。这些发现只是延续了这样一种观念，即情景记忆不应该被视为一个单一的结构，而应该是一个多方面的过程。以系统的方式实施和使用情景记忆的多种评估可以使我们更好地了解这些不同的过程何时开始出现在早年以及它们发展的轨迹。这种“分而治之”的设计，用于评估EM的要素（Cystal & Suddendorf，2019）在与言语前或早期参与者合作时尤其重要，因为试图创建一个单一的，统一的整体EM测量可能需要复杂的认知水平和语言能力，而这些能力在这个阶段尚未完全发展。如果这种电池可以有效地为非常年幼的儿童开发，然后，这些评估可以适用于测试AI代理。最近的一系列研究，动物人工智能测试平台（克罗斯比等人，2020年），采用了比较认知设计，将人工智能体放置在3D虚拟环境中，在那里它们可以在一系列以前由动物成功完成的认知任务上进行测试。然而，值得注意的是，还需要对人工智能代理中EM所需的认知过程进行评估，这可以为围绕人工智能融入社会和专业领域的快速发展的工作提供宝贵的见解。现有文献的简要概述揭示了我在这个项目中旨在克服的两个主要空白：婴儿期/幼儿期情景记忆的系统个体发育，以及开发用于测试AI代理中情景记忆元素的强大有效评估。因此，本研究的目的如下：1）实施现有的，并开发新的，EM测试最终在电池的评估非常年幼的儿童2）使用的数据，任务性能，以开发额外的测试EM为言语前的婴儿和AI代理这项研究将有助于一个全面的时间轴的认知发展，最终在完整的，重建的，情景记忆。幼儿的这种情节式认知演变的时间轴将为EM出现的知识基础增添新的见解。开发一种测试人工智能情景记忆的媒介，也将使我们能够在这一指标上进行第一次直接的人类-人工智能比较。