The development of prospective memory in early childhood: Contributions of retrospective memory and executive control processes

这个研究项目考察了儿童如何发展记忆以实现他们的意图的能力，即所谓的前瞻性记忆。这是一种关键的认知能力，使孩子能够独立于父母和照顾者发挥作用。儿童日常生活中典型的前瞻性记忆任务包括记得将作业交还给老师，或者记得在骑自行车之前戴上自行车头盔。有趣的是，孩子们经常忘记执行他们的意图，尽管他们能够记住并报告他们应该做什么。这种能力对儿童发展的许多领域都有重要的影响，包括他们的学习和社会功能以及他们的安全和幸福。典型的实验室前瞻记忆任务包括：(1)分配给儿童一个前瞻意图，(2)引入一个延迟间隔，在这个延迟间隔中，儿童完成一项分心活动，(3)在延迟间隔之后进行一项任务，以及(4)正在进行的任务中出现的几个暗示，表明儿童应该完成预期意图。在研究结束时，儿童被要求确认他们记住了任务指令，以消除儿童简单地忘记他们应该做什么的可能性。目前的研究将考察回顾记忆(记住预期意图的内容)和执行过程(涉及检测线索和执行意图)对儿童早期预期记忆表现的贡献。三个项目将研究儿童早期的前瞻记忆和回溯记忆之间的关系，排除前瞻记忆失败是由于回溯记忆的瞬间失误所致的可能性，并研究可能减少促进成功前瞻记忆的执行需求的因素。综上所述，本研究将有助于更好地理解线索监控等执行过程是否有助于前瞻记忆的发展，以及回溯记忆对前瞻记忆发展的相对贡献是什么。本研究将检验前瞻记忆的发展模型(Mahy，Mosse，&Kliegel，2014)，该模型认为，尽管简单意图的回溯记忆必须在儿童表现出成功的前瞻记忆之前就已经存在，但对前瞻记忆线索的监控等执行过程推动着儿童时期的前瞻记忆的发展。这些发现将确定儿童预期记忆成功和失败的条件。更广泛地说，它将有助于我们理解儿童的记忆发展，特别是执行未来意图的记忆。

This program of research examines how children develop the ability to remember to carry out their intentions, known as prospective memory. This is a critical cognitive ability that allows children to function independently from their parents and caregivers. Examples of prospective memory tasks typical in children's everyday life include remembering to return a homework assignment to a teacher or remembering to wear a bicycle helmet before taking a bike ride. Interestingly, children often forget to carry out their intentions despite being able to remember and report what it was they were supposed to do. This ability has important implications for many areas of children's development including their academic and social functioning as well as their safety and well-being.A typical laboratory prospective memory task involves: (1) children being assigned a prospective intention, (2) the introduction of a delay interval in which children complete a distractor activity, (3) an ongoing task that follows the delay interval, and (4) several cues that appear in the ongoing task that signal that the child should complete the prospective intention. At the end of the study, children are asked to confirm that they remember the task instructions in order to eliminate the possibility that children simply forgot what they were supposed to do.The current research will examine the contributions of retrospective memory (remembering the content of the prospective intention) and executive processes (involved in detecting the cue and carrying out the intention) to prospective memory performance during early childhood. Three projects will examine the relation between prospective memory and retrospective memory across early childhood, rule out the possibility that prospective memory failures are due to momentary lapses in retrospective memory, and examine factors that might reduce executive demands to promote successful prospective memory. Taken together, this research will contribute to a better understanding of whether executive processes such as cue monitoring contribute to the development of prospective memory and what the relative contribution of retrospective memory is to prospective memory development.This research will test a developmental model of prospective memory (Mahy, Moses, & Kliegel, 2014) that asserts that although retrospective memory for simple intentions must be in place before a children demonstrate successful prospective memory, executive processes such as monitoring for the prospective memory cue drive the development of prospective memory during childhood. The findings will establish the conditions under which children's prospective memory is successful and conditions under which it fails. More broadly, it will contribute to our understanding of children's memory development, especially memory for carrying out future intentions.