The Development Of Episodic Memory In Children Aged 3 To 5 Years

Episodic memory refers to the individual's memory of an experienced event based on the relationship between space and time,which is inseparable from the personal experience.As the basis of cognition,episodic memory is also the ability to link the past and remember the special details of the event,for example,"where did I put my smart phone?" and a series of daily memory challenges.In the 1950s,researchers began to study memory.Until the 1980s,with the rise of information processing theory and psychological theory,the research of episodic memory was no longer limited to exploring the influence of memory materials and learning conditions;instead,it paid more attention to its association with other cognitive abilities.This research focused on the development of infant's episodic memory and explores the relevance and role of their Theory of Mind,and comprehensively investigated the development of episodic memory in 172 pre-school infant children aged three to five under two kinds of memory acquisition conditions and at two kinds of motion enhancement levels.In research I,the mixture experiment design,namely,3(infant children aged three,four and five)x 2(gender:boy or girl)x 2(episodic memory acquisition conditions without motion enhancement:direct experience and indirect information),was used to investigate the development of episodic memory of 86 infant children in M kindergarten under non-motion enhancement level.The results show that:(1)there are significant age differences in the development of infant children's episodic memory,and the older infant children have higher recall accuracy;(2)there are significant differences in the performance of infant children under the two kinds of memory acquisition conditions,and the recall accuracy under direct experience condition is higher than that under indirect information condition;(3)there is no significant gender difference in the recall quality of infant children.In Research II,the mixture experiment design,namely,3(infant children aged three,four and five)× 2(gender:boy or girl)x 2(episodic memory acquisition conditions with motion enhancement:direct experience and indirect information),was used to investigate the development of episodic memory of 86 infant children in M kindergarten under motion enhancement level.The results show that:(1)there are significant differences in the development of infant children's episodic memory,and the older infant children have higher recall accuracy;(2)there are significant differences in the recall quality under different motion enhancement levels,and the recall accuracy under motion enhancement level is higher than that without motion enhancement.The results of two memory acquisition conditions are the same as research I;(3)there is no significant gender difference in the recall quality of infant children.After a comprehensive research of 172 infant children's development of serial ToM tasks,Research III findings are as follows:(1)there are significant differences in the performance of infant children in serial ToM tasks,and the older infant children got higher grades in serial ToM tasks;(2)there are significant differences in the performance of the two kinds of false beliefs,and the performance with episodic false beliefs is better than that of classic false beliefs;(3)serial psychology theory is closely related to the development of episodic memory ability,which develop synergistically.Short-term intervention research of the false episodic belief shows that the teaching intervention combining the episodic memory ability and false beliefs is effective and practical,and episodic memory is repeatable.To sum up,this research combines episodic memory with social cognition,reveals the development process of episodic memory of infant children,and clarifies its close relationship with psychological theory:The input of psychology can't be separated from the past experience.If the information comes from the past experience,it will produce real episodic memory,which will help to understand the intentions,desire.If the information comes from the indirectly obtained,it will produce false memories and false belief.In addition,the higher level of Theory of mind,the better recall quality of infants.On the above basis,it combines experimental research and intervention research,which is practical and provides a reference for the cultivation of infant children's episodic memory in daily life.