On Family Tutoring from the Perspective of Reconstructive Memory: A Review Analysis of the “Empirical Completion” Phenomenon in Middle Childhood Children

Abstract

Children in middle childhood often produce comprehension errors in the context of family tutoring, and these errors cannot be explained merely by carelessness, insufficient practice, or simple forgetting. This paper provides a retrospective conceptual analysis and names such biased error phenomena “empirical completion”. It aims to illustrate that when children experience such phenomena, they unconsciously fill the information gaps formed during memory encoding with existing empirical schemas in their minds. Then, in the process of memory reconstruction, the incorrectly filled information is mistaken by children as part of the original memory, thus outputting an incorrect overall memory that is inconsistent with the original reality. By integrating literature on reconstructive memory, schematic processing, source-monitoring framework, retrieval practice, and corrective feedback, this study clarifies the exact definition, scope, and exclusion criteria of the concept of “empirical completion”, summarizes its main manifestations in the family tutoring environment, and analyzes four possible intervention paths suitable for family tutoring, including information source cueing, multi-context memory encoding support, guided retrieval practice, and scaffolded corrective feedback.