We propose that young children exhibit an order of encoding bias, such that they are inclined to report or act out events in the order in which they were originally encoded. This bias helps to explain why children assume that events they first hear described are in chronological order and why they often appear to understand "after" better than "before" when they are questioned about experienced events. Asking children about a sequence of events as a whole (in particular using "first") could avoid order of encoding biases, because children would not have to answer questions about events within the sequence. In the present study, 100 2- to 4-year-old children participated in creating simple stories in which a story child interacted with five objects, thus creating five unrelated events. Children then responded to questions asking them to identify which action occurred "before" and "after" the third event and which action occurred "first" and "last" in the story. We hypothesized that (1) children would exhibit a tendency to answer "before" and "after" questions with the event that occurred after the queried event, thus impairing performance on "before" questions; (2) children would respond more accurately to questions about what occurred "first" and "last" than to questions about "before" and "after"; (3) children would respond more accurately to questions about "first" than questions about "last," and (4) children's performance would improve with age. The hypotheses were supported. Critically, children's errors when responding to "before"/ "after" questions were consistent with an order of encoding bias.

中文翻译：

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编码顺序可预测幼儿对排序问题的反应

我们建议幼儿表现出编码偏差的顺序，因此他们倾向于按照最初编码的顺序报告或执行事件。这种偏见有助于解释为什么儿童认为他们第一次听到描述的事件是按时间顺序排列的，以及为什么当他们被问及经历过的事件时，他们似乎对“之后”的理解比“之前”更好。向孩子们询问整个事件序列（特别是使用“第一”）可以避免编码偏差的顺序，因为孩子们不必回答有关序列内事件的问题。在本研究中，100 名 2 至 4 岁儿童参与创作简单故事，故事儿童与五个物体互动，从而创作五个不相关的事件。然后孩子们回答问题，要求他们确定哪个动作发生在第三个事件“之前”和“之后”，以及哪个动作发生在故事中的“第一个”和“最后一个”。我们假设（1）儿童会表现出对发生在查询事件之后的事件回答“之前”和“之后”问题的倾向，从而影响“之前”问题的表现；(2) 儿童对“首先”和“最后”发生的事情的回答比“之前”和“之后”的问题更准确；(3) 儿童对“第一”的问题比对“最后”的问题反应更准确；(4) 儿童的表现会随着年龄的增长而提高。假设得到支持。关键的是，