第52章 (第2/3页)
s schemas tend to be idiosyncratic. For example, a small child’s “daddy” schema
may include all adult males, football games on TV, daddy’s favorite chair, and the lawn mower.
135
PSYCHOLOGY AND LIFE
Processes like Piaget’s assimilation and accommodation proceed to alter these schemas as the
child’s organization of reality comes to be more like that of the adults of his or her society. Memories
of early childhood may be altered and revised until they are adult memories rather than actually
early childhood memories. The early memories are altered to “fit” into schemas that the child
develops with age. This theory is similar to interference in that as the child matures, new memories
interfere with or replace older memories. This theory seems reasonably credible because it can be
applied to both episodic and semantic memories. Children do not remember the
overgeneralizations they made of words or the restricted context in which they used early
vocabulary. They also do not remember the grammatical structures they used as they began to
combine words into sentences.
Theory 5: Schema Differences, Too
Yet another explanation that emphasizes schemas also points to the difference between the
schemas of early childhood and those of later years. Early memories would have to be represented
by actions, images, and feelings, rather than by symbols, primarily words. Even after children begin
to use words, some psychologists claim that language is used for expressive purpose and
communication, but not as a tool for thought. A child might be four or five years old before
memories begin to be symbolically stored with language. As language takes over as the primary
vehicle for the organization of reality, the ability to retrieve autobiographical memories stored as
emotions, actions, or images is lost because there are not retrieval cues. Aspects of this theory have
appeal, particularly because it specifically considers the child’s lack of language.
The three primary theories of adult forgetting are motivated forgetting or repression, interference,
and cue-dependent memory. Versions of these same theories can be used to explain childhood
amnesia, along with theories that emphasize immaturity of brain structures. The bottom line is that
childhood amnesia remains a mystery. At present, we can only speculate why it occurs.
The Zeigarnik Effect
At about the same time that Freud was ta
（本章未完，请点击下一页继续阅读）