Recent evidence shows that returning to the same distinct lab setting after 1 week triggers spontaneous memories in 35- and 46-month-old children. However, it remains unclarified which specific cues are triggering spontaneous recall. We report two experiments in which distinct contextual cues were altered between encoding and test. In Experiment 1 (N = 76), the color of the box containing the event props was changed. Despite this change, the children still showed spontaneous recall. In Experiment 2 (N = 77), a more radical change was employed as the children returned to a completely differently furnished, and novel room. The children still engaged in spontaneous recall, although less frequently. Importantly, when comparing the number of children having spontaneous recollections, only about half as many children in Experiment 2 as in Experiment 1 exhibited spontaneous memories. These results underscore the importance of an encoding-retrieval match for spontaneous episodic memory in young children.

最近的证据表明，1 周后回到相同的不同实验室环境会触发 35 个月和 46 个月大的儿童的自发记忆。然而，尚不清楚哪些特定线索触发了自发回忆。我们报告了两个实验，其中不同的上下文线索在编码和测试之间发生了变化。在实验 1（N  = 76）中，更改了包含事件道具的框的颜色。尽管有这种变化，孩子们仍然表现出自发的回忆。在实验 2 ( N = 77)，当孩子们回到布置完全不同的新房间时，采用了更彻底的改变。孩子们仍然进行自发回忆，尽管频率较低。重要的是，当比较具有自发回忆的儿童数量时，实验 2 中表现出自发记忆的儿童只有实验 1 中的一半左右。这些结果强调了编码-检索匹配对幼儿自发情景记忆的重要性。