Previous research by Kaniel & Lubow in 1986 found that young children (aged 4-5 years) exhibited poorer learning (latent inhibition) to preexposed stimuli than older children (aged 7-10 years). The aim of our research was to develop a computer-based, child-friendly study that would replicate and extend the work of Kaniel & Lubow in a way that ruled out other, attention-based explanations of their effect. One hundred and four children and 32 undergraduate students took part in our experiment. This consisted of a preexposure/study phase in which participants were asked to press computer keys in response to clipart pictures of animals and dinosaurs. Each animal or dinosaur picture was preceded by one of 2 "warning signals" that acted as the preexposed stimuli (to which no response was required). In the test phase that followed, the participants had to either press the spacebar or withhold their response to each preexposed stimulus and two novel stimuli. They learned which response was correct by trial and error using the feedback provided. The accuracy and reaction time (RT) of the responses during the test phase were analyzed and indicated that the youngest children showed significantly lower mean accuracy and longer mean response times to the preexposed stimuli than to stimuli they had not been preexposed to. In contrast, the older children showed no significant differences in their responses to preexposed and novel stimuli. These results are consistent with those found by Kaniel & Lubow and as such provide additional evidence for latent inhibition in young children. We discuss the implications for theories of perceptual learning in humans. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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幼儿的潜在抑制：对发育的影响？

Kaniel & Lubow 于 1986 年进行的先前研究发现，与年龄较大的儿童（7-10 岁）相比，幼儿（4-5 岁）对预先暴露的刺激表现出较差的学习能力（潜在抑制）。我们研究的目的是开发一项基于计算机的、对儿童友好的研究，该研究将复制和扩展 Kaniel & Lubow 的工作，以排除对其影响的其他基于注意力的解释。104 名儿童和 32 名本科生参加了我们的实验。这包括预曝光/研究阶段，参与者被要求按计算机键来响应动物和恐龙的剪贴画图片。每张动物或恐龙图片之前都有 2 个“警告信号”中的一个作为预曝光刺激（不需要响应）。在接下来的测试阶段，参与者必须要么按下空格键，要么对每个预先暴露的刺激和两个新刺激保持反应。他们使用所提供的反馈通过反复试验来了解哪种反应是正确的。对测试阶段反应的准确性和反应时间 (RT) 进行了分析，结果表明，与未预先暴露的刺激相比，最年幼的儿童对预暴露刺激的平均准确性和平均反应时间显着降低。相比之下，年龄较大的儿童对暴露前和新刺激的反应没有显着差异。这些结果与 Kaniel & Lubow 发现的结果一致，因此为幼儿的潜在抑制提供了额外的证据。我们讨论了对人类感知学习理论的影响。