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

成年人倾向于以积极的方式记住自己。例如，他们更有可能记住过去的善行而不是过去的恶行。我们调查了儿童（N = 40) 在他们如何记住与自己相关的信息方面也存在偏见。使用自我参考记忆范式，我们发现 8 至 10 岁儿童对平均动作短语（例如，“对某人说谎”）的源记忆在这些短语是参考他们自己编码时比参考他人编码。自我引用的平均短语的源记忆也比自我引用的好动作短语（例如，“善待某人”）和自我引用的中性动作短语（例如，“画一个圆圈”）的源记忆差。这些结果为儿童记忆中的自我增强提供了一些初步的实验证据。