Despite the fact that children can draw on their memories to make novel inferences, it is unknown whether they do so through the same neural mechanisms as adults. We measured memory reinstatement as participants aged 7–30 years learned new, related information. While adults brought memories to mind throughout learning, adolescents did so only transiently, and children not at all. Analysis of trial-wise variability in reactivation showed that discrepant neural mechanisms—and in particular, what we interpret as suppression of interfering memories during learning in early adolescence—are nevertheless beneficial for later inference at each developmental stage. These results suggest that while adults build integrated memories well-suited to informing inference directly, children and adolescents instead must rely on separate memories to be individually referenced at the time of inference decisions.

尽管儿童可以利用他们的记忆做出新的推论，但尚不清楚他们是否通过与成人相同的神经机制来这样做。当 7-30 岁的参与者学习新的相关信息时，我们测量了记忆恢复情况。虽然成年人在整个学习过程中都会记住记忆，但青少年只会短暂地这样做，而儿童则完全不会。对重新激活的试验性变异性的分析表明，存在差异的神经机制——尤其是我们解释为在青春期早期学习过程中抑制干扰记忆——仍然有利于每个发育阶段的后期推理。这些结果表明，虽然成年人建立了非常适合直接进行推理的综合记忆，