ABSTRACT

Adults tend to remember themselves in a positive way. For example, they are more likely to remember their past good deeds rather than their past bad deeds. We investigated whether children (N = 40) are also biased in how they remember information related to themselves. Using the self-reference memory paradigm, we found that 8- to 10-year-olds’ source memory for mean action phrases (e.g., “Lie to someone”) was worse when the phrases were encoded with reference to themselves compared to when they were encoded with reference to others. Source memory for self-referenced mean phrases was also worse than source memory for self-referenced nice action phrases (e.g., “Be kind to someone”) and self-referenced neutral action phrases (e.g., “Draw a circle”). These results provide some of the first experimental evidence for self-enhancement in children's memory.

摘要

成人倾向于以积极的方式记住自己。例如，他们更有可能记住自己过去的好事，而不是过去的坏事。我们调查了儿童（N = 40）在记忆自己的相关信息方面也存在偏见。使用自我参照记忆范式，我们发现，相对于他们自己编码的短语来说，8至10岁儿童的平均动作短语（例如，“对某人撒谎”）的源记忆更差被参考他人编码。自我参照的平均短语的源记忆也比自我参照的好的动作短语（例如，“对某人好”）和自我参照的中立动作短语（例如，画一个圆圈）的源记忆差。这些结果为儿童记忆力的自我增强提供了一些初步的实验证据。