Development of Social Working Memory in Preschoolers and Its Relation to Theory of Mind

Social working memory (WM) has distinct neural substrates from canonical cognitive WM (e.g., color). However, no study, to the best of our knowledge, has yet explored how social WM develops. The current study explored the development of social WM capacity and its relation to theory of mind (ToM). Experiment 1 had sixty-four 3- to 6-year-olds memorize 1-5 biological motion stimuli, the processing of which is considered a hallmark of social cognition. The social WM capacity steadily increased between 3- and 6-year-olds, with the increase between 4 and 5 years being sharp. Furthermore, social WM capacity positively predicted preschoolers' ToM scores, while nonsocial WM capacity did not; this positive correlation was particularly strong among 4-year-olds (Experiment 2, N = 144).

社会工作记忆（WM）具有与典型认知工作记忆（例如颜色）不同的神经基础。然而，据我们所知，还没有研究探索社会工作记忆是如何发展的。当前的研究探索了社会工作记忆能力的发展及其与心理理论（ToM）的关系。实验1中，64名3到6岁的儿童记忆1 - 5个生物运动刺激，对生物运动刺激的处理被认为是社会认知的一个标志。3到6岁儿童的社会工作记忆能力稳步提高，其中4到5岁之间的增长显著。此外，社会工作记忆能力正向预测学龄前儿童的心理理论分数，而非社会工作记忆能力则没有；这种正相关在4岁儿童中尤为强烈（实验2，N = 144）。