Lecture 5 儿童记忆
Wors Tips
amnesia n.[病]失忆症 incident n.发生的事情
repressed adj.受压抑的；被抑制的 captive adj.被困住的；保存住的
represent v.代表 infant n.婴儿
stimuli n.刺激 psychology n.心理学
disturbing adj.引起烦恼的；令人不安的；引起恐慌的
dominant adj.首要的；占支配地位的；占优势的；显著的
JeanPiaget 让·皮亚杰（瑞士著名心理学家）
symbolically adv.用符号表示地；象征性地
Listen to the following recording and answer questions 1-4.
1）A.to discuss possible explanations for childhood amnesia
B.to describe key features of childhood amnesia
C.to explain methods of testing memory in children of different ages
D.to discuss why the ability recall memories diminishes as a person ages
2）A.to help students relate to the topic she is about to discuss
B.to establish that people vary in the time of their earliest memory
C.to introduce the connection between language and memory
D.to point out a common thing in the earliest memories of most people
3）A.Early memories are repressed.
B.Young children have few experiences to remember.
C.Young children lack some captive capacity for memory.
D.Young children do form memories but forget them as they grow older.
4）A.Young children under the age of 2 do have the capacity for recall.
B.Childhood amnesia was caused by children’s poor language capacity.
C.Infants don’t have any sort of memory.
D.Children under the age of 2 can only recognize some stimuli，like faces.
听力原文
OK.If I ask about the earliest thing you can remember，I will bet for most of you your earliest memory would be from about age 3，right？ Well，that’s true for most adults.We can’t remember anything that happened before the age of 3.And this phenomenon is so widespread and well-documented.It has a name — it’s called childhood amnesia and was first documented in 1893.
As I said，this phenomenon refers to adults not being able to remember childhood incidents.It’s not children trying to remember events from last month or last year.Of course it follows that if you can’t remember an incident as a child，you probably won’t remember as an adult.OK，so … why is this？ What is the reason for childhood amnesia？Well，once a popular explanation was that childhood memories are repressed.The memories are disturbing so that adults we keep them buried.And so we can recall them and this is based on…well it’s not based on the kind of self-research in lab testing I want to talk about today.So let’s put that explanation aside and concentrate on just two.OK？It could be that as children we do form memories of things prior to age 3，but forget them as we grow older.That’s one explanation.Another possibility is that children younger than 3 lack some captive capacity for memory.And that idea，that children are unable to form memories.That’s been the dominant belief in psychology for the past 100 years.And this idea is very much tied to two things，the theories of Jean Piaget and also to language development in children.
So Piaget’s theory of cognitive development — Piaget suggested that because they don’t have language，children younger than 18-24 months live in the here and now，that is，they lack the means to symbolically represent objects，and events，that are not physically present.Everybody get that？ Piaget proposed that young children don’t have a way to represent things that aren’t wide in front of them.That’s what language does，right？ Words represent things，ideas.Once language starts to develop from about age 2，they do have a system for symbolic representation and can talk about things which aren’t in their immediate environment including the past.Of course he didn’t claim that infants don’t have any sort of memory.It’s acknowledged that they can recognize some stimuli，like faces.And for many years this model was very much in favor in psychology，even though memory tests were never performed on young children.
Well，finally in the 1980s，a study was done.And this study showed that very young children，under the age of 2，do have the capacity for recall.
Questions：
1.What is the main purpose of the lecture？
2.Why does the professor ask students about their earliest memories？
3.According to the professor，which of the following is NOT a commonly held explanation for childhood amnesia？
4.What did the study in the 1980s show to us？
参考译文
如果问你能回想起的最早的回忆，我打赌你们绝大多数都会说3岁左右的事儿，对不对？嗯，大多数成年人都如此。我们记不起3岁前的事，这种现象非常普遍而且证据充分，以至于我们用一个专有名词称呼它。这种现象叫童年记忆缺失，最早的记录始于1893年。
就像我说的，这现象指的是成年人无法回想起童年的事。这和儿童试图去回想上个月或去年发生的事不是一类。当然也存在这种可能，就是如果当年作为儿童你记不起一件事，那么成年了当然会记不起。不论怎样，总之，为什么会有这种现象？童年记忆缺失的根源是什么？曾经盛行的解释是童年回忆被压抑了，那些回忆令人烦扰，以至于成年后被我们深深埋藏。所以，我们是能再回想起来那些记忆的，如果满足某些条件的话……当然我们今天不会探讨实验室里那种自我反省和追溯的问题。总之我们先不讲这个，就集中说说以下两点。OK？可能我们在3岁之前确实也形成了记忆，但是在我们长大的过程中就慢慢遗忘了，这是一种解释。另一中可能性是，小于3岁的儿童缺乏记忆抓取能力，认为儿童无法形成记忆，这种思想已经在心理学上主导了100年。而这种思想与两个理论密切相关，那就是Jean Piaget的理论以及儿童语言发展的理论。
Piaget的认知发展理论认为，因为幼儿无法使用语言，18—24月大的幼儿只关注现时世界，也就是说他们对于无形的物质和事件缺乏指代性的表达手段。你们懂了吗？Piaget提出，幼儿无法去表现那些展现在他们面前的、并不是一清二楚的事物，这是只有语言才可以做到的，不是吗？字词可以代替物体、思想。从2岁起，幼儿的语言能力开始发展，他们才有了一套指示体系，可以去谈论并不真实存在于他们周围的事物，这其中就包括往事。当然，Piaget并没有宣称婴儿没有任何记忆，普遍被认可的观点是他们能记得某些刺激物，比如人的脸。这种模式在心理学界很受欢迎，虽然相关的记忆实验从来没在婴儿身上做过。
最终在20世纪80年代，科学家做了研究。这个研究表明很小的儿童，也就是2岁以下的儿童，确实有回忆的能力。
参考答案
1.A 2.A 3.B 4.A