The Developmental Trends Of Pirmary School Children’s Temporary Metamemory

Temporal metamemory refers to the knowledge of how we remember the timesof past events, the properties and processes of memory for the times of past events.(Friedman,2007)The study of temporal metamemory has great theoretically attribution. Frist,thestudy of temporal metamemory enriches the understanding of the development ofhuman cognitive ability, including the development of auto biological memory andthe ability of ordering the past events. Second, the study of time memory andtemporal metamemory also has great relevant to our understanding of thedevelopment of source mounting,because the time of an events is considered to be animportant type of information in establishing its origin. Third, the study of temporalmetamemory could add our knowledge about children’s memory process. The studyof time memory and temporal metamemory has the realistic attribution. The teachercan teach students according to the ability of temporal metamemory, cultivate thepercept of time and the ability of programming time.According to the carding of former research,there are some disadvantages.(1)In the former research, in order to get the information which processes can be used toremember the time of past events, the subjects was asked by open-end question. Mostresearchers choose life events to make the question easier to understand. But the lifeevents are very easily effected by former life experience.(2)Most of the task of formerresearch are oral reported, and ask for explaining reasons, however, subjects use aprocess and aware it are not usually at the same time. So maybe subjects have used aprocess, but they report that they do not aware it. This may attribute to the backwardof development level. At the same time, many subjects choose to answer that they donot use the process to avoid explaining.(3)Many researchers ignore the limitation ofchildren cognitive level. Sometimes children can not understand the open-end question, so their answers are not relevant to their understanding of experimentalmaterial.(4)The process of former research is finished by research assistance, it isdifficult to control the artificial factors, such as the time presenting experimentalmaterial and the extend of explaining the instruction.My research is based on the disadvantage of former research and make it betterin the following four aspects.(1)In the open-end questions, we choose the events thathas almost certainly never occurred to the subjects, to avoid the effect of former lifeexperience. So the answers of subjects are based on the knowledge of their memory,and can reveal the true level of their time memory ability.(2)The research task isnon-verbal reported, subjects do not have to explain reasons. It can reveal the truelevel in maximum extend.(3)Considering the limitation of children cognitive ability,we choose pictures as experimental materiala, so their answers are based on theirunderstanding of experimental materials.(4)Make use of E-prime program to controlthe duration of presentation and the instruction. This can make the process ofexperiment object and uniform.