The role of inhibition in children's everyday and face identification memory

我们严重依赖记忆来完成日常任务。每次我们跑腿或找钥匙的时候，我们都依赖于之前经历的记忆来有效地执行这些任务。在某些情况下，我们回忆自传式事件的能力对我们周围的人有实质性的影响。我们必须了解记忆的结构，以便能够预测和提高记忆性能。在这项工作中，有两个主要的探索领域。第一个领域的工作重点是更好地理解部分提取记忆如何影响儿童随后的记忆报告。当记忆被作为检索的目标时，回忆并不是详尽的。也就是说，我们通常只从经验中检索我们认为相关的细节。一种被称为“检索诱发遗忘”的普遍现象预测，这种只检索相关细节的策略存在缺点。以特定的记忆为目标进行检索可能会导致在随后试图检索相关但未检索的记忆时更大的困难。先前的研究表明，在儿童中，真实记忆会受到部分提取的影响，而虚假记忆则不会。本研究将利用部分检索范式探讨真实记忆和虚假记忆的不同现象。第二个研究领域将是儿童的目击者识别能力。尽管对儿童面部识别的研究已经蓬勃发展了几十年，但专门针对提高儿童识别准确性的程序方面的进展却很少。多年来，研究人员研究了儿童在指认任务中的识别行为，这些任务是针对成年人的；然而，最近的证据清楚地表明，儿童在身份识别程序中需要便利。人们对儿童证人的一贯担忧是，他们倾向于从名单中选择过多的证人。这项研究将探索一种新的儿童面部识别程序的发展，该程序专门设计用于在目标不在队列中时减少他们的选择。这两个领域的研究对理解儿童记忆是如何表现的以及由此产生的理论进步都有意义。这项工作也有应用意义。越来越多的儿童在司法系统中充当证人，记忆报告是他们证词的基础。对其能力和局限性的进一步了解促进了新技术的发展，以协助他们参与司法系统。

We rely heavily on memory to navigate daily tasks. Each time we run errands or try to find our keys, we rely on our memory of prior experiences to execute these tasks efficiently. In some contexts, our ability to recall autobiographical events can have substantive implications for those around us. We must understand how memory is structured in order to be able to predict and enhance memory performance. In this work, there are two primary areas of exploration. The first area of work is focused on better understanding how partially retrieving a memory influences children’s subsequent memory reports. When memories are targeted for retrieval, recall is not exhaustive. That is, we typically only retrieve what we consider to be the relevant details from an experience. A well-established phenomenon, called retrieval-induced forgetting, predicts that there are disadvantages to this strategy of retrieving only relevant details. Targeting specific memories for retrieval may result in greater difficulty when subsequently attempting to retrieve related, but non-retrieved memories. Previous research has indicated that, in children, true memories are subject to this effect of partial retrieval, but false memories are not. This research will explore the different phenomenon of true and false memories using this partial-retrieval paradigm. A second area of study will be children’s eyewitness identification abilities. Though research on children’s face identification has been thriving for decades, there have been few procedural advances aimed specifically at improving children’s identification accuracy. For many years, researchers examined children’s identification behaviour on lineup tasks that were intended for adults; however, recent evidence makes it clear that children require accommodations in identification procedures. A consistent concern expressed about child eyewitnesses is their tendency to over-choose from lineups. This research will explore the development of a new face identification procedure for children that is specifically designed to reduce their choosing when a target is not present in the lineup. Both areas of research have implications for understanding of how children’s memory is represented and the resulting advancement of theory. This work also has applied implications. Increasingly, children are performing as witnesses in the justice system and memory reports are the basis of their testimony. Enhanced understanding of their capabilities and limitations promotes the development of new techniques to assist their involvement in the justice system.