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Developmental changes in the specificity of memory over the second year of lie
Abstract
Developmental changes in the specificity of memory were examined in five experiments with 12- to 21-month-old infants. In all experiments, infants were tested in a deferred imitation paradigm; the specificity of the cues necessary to retrieve the target memory was assessed after a delay. Changes in cues that disrupted performance at 12 months had no effect on performance at 18 months, and changes in cues that disrupted performance at 18 months had no effect on performance at 21 months. These findings indicate that one hallmark of memory development is an increase in the range of effective retrieval cues for a particular memory. We propose that this change in effective retrieval cues increases the range of situations in which early learning experiences are retrieved and expressed and may contribute to the decline of childhood amnesia during the third year of life.
... The mobile conjugate reinforcement paradigm has been used exclusively with 2-6-month-olds (for reviews, see , whereas deferred imitation procedures are most commonly used with infants over the age of 9 months (for reviews, see Meltzoff, 1990). From a developmental perspective, it has been argued that the difference in findings obtained using these two experimental procedures reflects an age-related increase in infants' ability to exploit potentially effective retrieval cues, not the memory requirements of the tasks themselves Hayne, Boniface, & Barr, 2000;Hayne, MacDonald, & Barr, 1997). For young infants, virtually all of the cues present at the time of original encoding must be reinstated in order for memory retrieval to occur. ...
... The range of effective cues, however, increases gradually during development. Although 12-month-olds who are tested in the puppet task imitate the target actions when tested in a novel context , they exhibit no imitation when they are tested with a novel puppet (Hayne et al., 1997. Even minor changes in the color or form of the puppet have been shown to disrupt the memory performance of 12-month-olds (Hayne et al., 1997). ...
... Although 12-month-olds who are tested in the puppet task imitate the target actions when tested in a novel context , they exhibit no imitation when they are tested with a novel puppet (Hayne et al., 1997. Even minor changes in the color or form of the puppet have been shown to disrupt the memory performance of 12-month-olds (Hayne et al., 1997). When tested in the same procedure, however, 18month-olds are extremely resilient to changes in the context or in the puppet. ...
Deferred imitation was used to trace changes in memory retrieval by 18–30-month-olds. In all experiments, an adult demonstrated 2 sets of actions using 2 different sets of stimuli. In Experiments 1A and 1B, independent groups of infants were tested immediately or after a 24-hr delay. Each infant was tested with 1 set of stimuli from the original demonstration and 1 set of stimuli that was different. Recall of the target actions when tested with different stimuli increased as a function of age, particularly after a delay. In Experiment 2, infants were provided with a unique verbal label for the stimuli during the demonstration and the test. The verbal label facilitated performance by 24-month-olds tested with different stimuli but had no effect on performance by 18-month-olds. One hallmark of memory development appears to be an age-related increase in the range of effective retrieval cues for a particular memory.
... Thus, in later encounters of the task, they should be dissociated from the task (flexibility). The sequence of actions is goal-relevant and should be imitated by a child regardless of the goal-irrelevant changes in shape or color (e.g., Hayne et al. 1997). ...
... Therefore, Crisafi and Brown's task that required integrating relevant information and ignoring distracting information acquired on two separate source problems (Crisafi and Brown 1986) is classified as a simple transfer task. How simple transfers are mastered in development was repeatedly investigated in the past (Alexander et al. 1989;Bauer and Dow 1994;Barr et al. 2020;Bechtel et al. 2013;Bobrowicz et al. 2020aBobrowicz et al. , 2022Booth and Waxman 2002;Brown and Kane 1988;Brown et al. 1989;Chen 1996;Chen and Daehler 1989;Chen et al. 1997;Crisafi and Brown 1986;DeLoache et al. 1991DeLoache et al. , 1999DeLoache et al. , 2004Gentner and Markman 1997;Goswami 1989;Goswami and Brown 1989;Hanna and Meltzoff 1993;Hayne et al. 1997Hayne et al. , 2000Herbert 2011;Herbert and Hayne 2000;Herbert et al. 2007;Hewson 1978;Holyoak et al. 1984;Kingo and Krøjgaard 2013;Learmonth et al. 2004;Madole et al. 1993;Madole and Cohen 1995;Pauen and Bechtel-Kuehne 2016;Simcock et al. 2011;Sternberg and Rifkin 1979;Taylor et al. 2016;Thibaut and French 2016;Träuble and Pauen 2007; see Section 3 and Table 2). Simple transfers seem to be available to children as young as 6 months. ...
... Changes within the cue (puppet) 12-month-olds fail to generalize across perceptual changes change in color, shape, color and shape Hayne et al. (1997) Changes within the cue (puppet) and the context (location) 12-month-olds generalize across a change in context Hayne et al. (2000) 12-month-olds fail to generalize across two perceptual changes in the cue 13 months 60-80 s None Physical problem solving No information Combining two source actions to solve a target problem 13-month-olds transfer modeled actions after fewer and more perceptually dissimilar source problems than 10-month-olds Chen et al. (1997) 14 months ...
Flexible problem solving, the ability to deal with currently goal-irrelevant information that may have been goal-relevant in previous, similar situations, plays a prominent role in cognitive development and has been repeatedly investigated in developmental research. However, this research, spanning from infancy to the school years, lacks a unifying framework, obscuring the developmental timing of flexible problem solving. Therefore, in this review paper, previous findings are gathered, organized, and integrated under a common framework to unveil how and when flexible problem solving develops. It is showed that the development of flexible problem solving coincides with increases in executive functions, that is, inhibition, working memory and task switching. The analysis of previous findings shows that dealing with goal-irrelevant, non-salient information received far more attention than generalizing in the presence of goal-irrelevant, salient information. The developmental timing of the latter can only be inferred from few transfer studies, as well as executive functions, planning and theory of mind research, to highlight gaps in knowledge and sketch out future research directions. Understanding how transfers in the presence of seemingly relevant but truly irrelevant information develops has implications for well-balanced participation in information societies, early and lifespan education, and investigating the evolutionary trajectory of flexible problem solving.
... In their initial investigation, Barr et al. (2003) simultaneously exposed 6-month-olds to two hand puppets (Phase 1: S 1 ↔ S 2 ); demonstrated target actions on S 1 (Phase 2: S 1 → R); and tested for deferred imitation with S 2 (Phase 3: S 2 → R?). In the absence of prior exposure, infants do not generalize responding to a different puppet until 21 months of age (Hayne, MacDonald, & Barr, 1997;Learmonth, Lamberth, & Rovee-Collier, 2004), but in the Barr et al. (2003) study, 6-month-olds who were simultaneously preexposed to S 1 and S 2 exhibited deferred imitation on S 2 -evidence of SPC. In comparison, an unpaired preexposure control group failed to imitate the target actions on S 2 . ...
... The infant was allowed 90 s (9-and 12-month-olds) or 120 s (6-month-olds) of visual and/or physical attention to the puppet from the time he or she first touched the puppet in which to imitate the previously modeled actions. Infants younger than 21 months do not generalize the modeled actions from one puppet to another whether they previously saw them unpaired or not at all (e.g., Hayne et al., 1997;Learmonth et al., 2004). If puppets S 1 and S 2 had been associated, then infants would exhibit deferred imitation on puppet S 2 . ...
... Consistent with our hypotheses and work with adults (Matzel et al., 1988;Rescorla, 1980), both simultaneous (marginally significant trend; see also Muentener, 2004) and sequential preexposure regimens were effective at 18 months. It is likely that the effects of simultaneous preexposure would be more robust if the paradigm could be extended to older ages; however, infants begin to generalize the target actions from one puppet to another by 21 months of age (Hayne et al., 1997). ...
Sensory preconditioning (SPC) is a form of latent learning in which preexposure to co-occurring neutral stimuli (S1-S2) permits subsequent learning to be transferred from one stimulus (S1) to the other (S2). We examined whether human infants exhibit developmental transitions in the temporal parameters of SPC by manipulating the preexposure regimen. Infants received simultaneous or sequential preexposure to puppets S1 and S2 (Days 1–2); saw target actions modeled on S1 (Day 3); and were tested for deferred imitation with S2 (Day 4). Although 6-, 9-, and 12-month-olds associated the puppets, there was a shift in the effective regimen from simultaneous to sequential preexposure—similar to prior findings with rat pups (Experiment 1). Experiment 2 revealed that human infants potentially exhibit another transition in SPC at 15 and 18 months of age. We consider the roles of ontogenetic shifts in infants’ ecological niche, selective attention, and unitization in developmental transitions in SPC.
... For example, at 6 months of age even small changes in the learning context between encoding and retrieval (e.g., change of the room or immediate surroundings) can disrupt memory retrieval Learmonth, Lamberth, & Rovee-Collier, 2004;Robinson & Pascalis, 2004). With increasing age, changes in the context are better tolerated, but changes in aspects more closely associated with a learning task, such as changes in the stimuli (e.g., changes in color and form) or in the identity of a teacher (Learmonth, Lamberth, & Rovee-Collier, 2005) can still disrupt memory retrieval during the second year of life Hayne, MacDonald, & Barr, 1997;Herbert & Hayne, 2000). In sum, with increasing age infants encode information faster, remember for longer, and are able to cope with increasing dissimilarities between the learning and the retrieval context/stimuli. ...
... In the puppet imitation task, infants become progressively able to retrieve their memory across a change of the stimulus' color between encoding and retrieval when they are aged between 12-and 18 months (Hayne et al., 1997). Therefore, in the present study, we examined the effect of daytime sleep on the flexible retrieval of memory across a stimulus change at 12 months of age. ...
... A jingle bell was secured to the inside of the mitten. The puppet stimuli have been widely used in deferred imitation studies with 12-month-old infants (e.g., Barr et al., 1996;Hayne et al., 1997;Jones & Herbert, 2008;Konrad et al., 2016;Seehagen et al., 2015). ...
Flexibility in applying existing knowledge to similar cues is a corner stone of memory development in infants. Here, we examine the effect of sleep on the flexibility of memory retrieval using a deferred imitation paradigm. Forty-eight 12-month-old infants were randomly assigned to either a nap or a no-nap demonstration condition (scheduled around their natural daytime sleep schedule) or to a baseline control condition. In the demonstration conditions, infants watched an experimenter perform three target actions on a hand puppet. Immediately afterwards, infants were allowed to practice the target actions three times. In a test session 4-hr later, infants were given the opportunity to reproduce the actions with a novel hand puppet differing in color from the puppet used during the demonstration session. Only infants in the nap-condition performed significantly more target actions than infants in the baseline control condition. Furthermore, they were faster to carry out the first target action than infants in the no-nap condition. We conclude that sleep had a facilitative effect on infants' flexibility of memory retrieval.
... At test, the infant's performance is based on whether they can replicate any of the three steps within 90 seconds. When shown a live demonstration of a sequence of actions using the puppet task, six-month-olds can recall and imitate these steps after a 24-hour delay when tested with the original puppet Hayne, MacDonald, & Barr, 1997), but fail to demonstrate recall if the puppet changes in color or shape. This ability to generalize across stimuli for the puppet task emerges at around 12 months for changes in color, and 18 months for changes in color and shape (Hayne, Boniface, & Barr, 2000). ...
... This ability to generalize across stimuli for the puppet task emerges at around 12 months for changes in color, and 18 months for changes in color and shape (Hayne, Boniface, & Barr, 2000). When an even greater disparity between the two puppets is introduced, however, 18-month-olds again fail to generalize between puppets but generalize to the greater perceptual difference between puppets by 21 months (Hayne et al., 1997). ...
... Overall, studies have demonstrated age-related increases in generalization in various paradigms, including operant conditioning (Borovsky & Rovee-Collier, 1990;Hayne et al., 1986;Hartshorn et al., 1998), imitation (Bauer & Dow, 1994;Bauer & Lukowski, 2010;Hayne et al., 2000;Hayne et al., 1997), and object search (DeLoache & Burns, 1994;Marzolf et al., 1999;Troseth & DeLoache, 1998) paradigms. These studies provide substantial empirical evidence demonstrating that older infants and young children can transfer information across changes in feature (e.g., color, size, and texture) (Adler, Gerhardstein, & Rovee-Collier, 1998;Hayne et al., 2000;Hayne et al., 1997), shape (object) (Herbert & Hayne, 2000), context (Borovsky & Rovee-Collier, 1990;Hanna & Meltzoff, 1993;Hayne et al., 2000;Herbert & Hayne, 2000;Klein & Meltzoff, 1999;Rovee-Collier, 1997), and combinations of cue and context change (Barnat et al., 1996;Hayne et al., 2000). ...
... Notably, deferred imitation is thought to assess episodic memory in nonverbal infants (Richmond and Nelson, 2007), since performance is vulnerable to medial temporal lobe damage in older individuals (Adlam et al., 2005;McDonough et al., 1995). Infants as young as 6-months old can imitate actions the day after the demonstration (Barr et al., 1996;Hayne et al., 1997), but their memory is highly specific in that they fail to imitate when features of the puppet (e.g., color or shape) or the location in which the task is performed is changed (Barnat et al., 1996;Hayne et al., 2000;Learmonth et al., 2004). Conversely, generalization in deferred imitation is first observed at 12 months when infants can retrieve action sequences using puppets that differ in color from the demonstration puppet, and by 18-months, infants can generalize their memory across puppets that differ in color and shape and across novel environments (e.g., imitation in the laboratory when demonstrated at home) (Hayne et al., 1997(Hayne et al., , 2000Learmonth et al., 2004). ...
... Infants as young as 6-months old can imitate actions the day after the demonstration (Barr et al., 1996;Hayne et al., 1997), but their memory is highly specific in that they fail to imitate when features of the puppet (e.g., color or shape) or the location in which the task is performed is changed (Barnat et al., 1996;Hayne et al., 2000;Learmonth et al., 2004). Conversely, generalization in deferred imitation is first observed at 12 months when infants can retrieve action sequences using puppets that differ in color from the demonstration puppet, and by 18-months, infants can generalize their memory across puppets that differ in color and shape and across novel environments (e.g., imitation in the laboratory when demonstrated at home) (Hayne et al., 1997(Hayne et al., , 2000Learmonth et al., 2004). A similar course of development is observed using visual paired-comparison task, in which 18-month old but not 6-and 12-month old infants exhibit a novelty preference when the stimulus background color is changed between encoding and retrieval (Robinson and Pascalis, 2004). ...
Interest in the ontogeny of memory blossomed in the twentieth century following the initial observations that memories from infancy and early childhood are rapidly forgotten. The intense exploration of infantile amnesia in subsequent years has led to a thorough characterization of its psychological determinants, although the neurobiology of memory persistence has long remained elusive. By contrast, other phenomena in the ontogeny of memory like infantile generalization have received relatively less attention. Despite strong evidence for reduced memory specificity during ontogeny, infantile generalization is poorly understood from psychological and neurobiological perspectives. In this review, we examine the ontogeny of memory persistence and specificity in humans and nonhuman animals at the levels of behavior and the brain. To this end, we first describe the behavioral phenotypes associated with each phenomenon. Looking into the brain, we then discuss neurobiological mechanisms in the hippocampus that contribute to the ontogeny of memory. Hippocampal neurogenesis and critical period mechanisms have recently been discovered to underlie amnesia during early development, and at the same time, we speculate that similar processes may contribute to the early bias towards memory generalization.
... Four hand puppets were used in this experiment, two resembling a mouse and two resembling a rabbit, with one of each being pink and one being grey (see Fig. 1). The puppets (30 cm high) were made out of soft fur and were developed for research purposes (e.g., Barr, Dowden, & Hayne, 1996;Hayne, MacDonald, & Barr, 1997). A removable felt mitten matching the color of the puppet (8 Â 9 cm), with a jingle bell secured inside, was placed over the puppet's right hand. ...
... Infants had 90 s to reproduce the target actions, timed from first touch. The bell inside the mitten was removed before the test session to avoid prompting memory retrieval (Barr, Vieira, & Rovee-Collier, 2001;Hayne et al., 1997). The experimenter did not verbally or physically prompt the infant to produce the target actions. ...
Gist extraction is the process of excerpting shared features from a pool of new items. The present study examined sleep and the consolidation of gist in 12-month-old infants using a deferred imitation paradigm. Sixty infants were randomly assigned to a nap, a no-nap or a baseline control condition. In the nap and no-nap conditions, infants watched demonstrations of the same target actions on three different hand puppets that shared some features. During a 4-hour delay, infants in the nap condition took a naturally scheduled nap while infants in the no-nap condition naturally stayed awake. Afterwards, infants were exposed to a novel forth hand puppet that combined some of the features from the previously encountered puppets. Only those infants who took a nap after learning produced a significantly higher number of target actions than infants in the baseline control condition who had not seen any demonstrations of target actions. Infants in the nap condition also produced significantly more target actions than infants in the no-nap condition. Sleep appears to support the storage of gist, which aids infants in applying recently acquired knowledge to novel circumstances.
... Four different hand puppets were used in the imitation task (counterbalanced across age and gender) which were specifically made for research purposes and not commercially available. The puppet stimuli have been successfully used in a number of deferred imitation studies with 6-and 12-month-old infants (e.g., Barr et al., 1996;Brito & Barr, 2014;Hayne, MacDonald, & Barr, 1997;Seehagen et al., 2015). There were two puppets resembling a mouse and two resembling a rabbit, one of each being gray and one pink. ...
... The test phase followed immediately and the infant was given 90 s from first touching the puppet to reproduce the target actions. The bell inside the mitten was removed before this phase, again outside the infant's view, to avoid prompting memory retrieval (e.g., Barr, Vieira, & Rovee-Collier, 2001;Hayne et al., 1997). The same puppet was used for all phases with each infant, but the puppet was varied across infants. ...
We examined whether sleep quality during the night and naps during the day preceding a learning event are related to memory encoding in human infants. Twenty-four 6- and twenty-four 12-month-old infants' natural sleeping behavior was monitored for 24 hr using actigraphy. After the recording period, encoding was assessed using an imitation paradigm. In an initial baseline phase, infants were allowed to interact with the stimulus to assess spontaneous production of any target actions. Infants then watched an experimenter demonstrate a sequence of three target actions and were immediately given the opportunity to reproduce the demonstrated target actions to assess memory encoding. Analyses revealed significant correlations between nighttime sleep quality variables (sleep efficiency, sleep fragmentation) and immediate imitation in 6-month-olds, but not in 12-month-olds. High sleep quality in the preceding night was thus positively associated with next day's memory encoding in 6-month-old infants. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Dev Psychobiol 9999: 1-12, 2016.
... Memory may start off highly specific, but memory flexibility or generalization gradually improves as the infant develops (Hayne, 2006;Barr and Brito, 2014). For example, although 12-montholds who are tested in the deferred imitation puppet task imitate the target actions when tested in a novel context , imitation is disrupted by even minor changes in the color or form of the puppet when they are tested with a novel puppet (Hayne et al., 1997. When tested in the same procedure, however, 18-month-olds are resilient to some changes in the context or features of the puppet, but if the perceptual dissimilarity of the puppet from encoding to retrieval is increased further, then once again memory retrieval by 18-month-olds is disrupted (Hayne et al., 1997). ...
... For example, although 12-montholds who are tested in the deferred imitation puppet task imitate the target actions when tested in a novel context , imitation is disrupted by even minor changes in the color or form of the puppet when they are tested with a novel puppet (Hayne et al., 1997. When tested in the same procedure, however, 18-month-olds are resilient to some changes in the context or features of the puppet, but if the perceptual dissimilarity of the puppet from encoding to retrieval is increased further, then once again memory retrieval by 18-month-olds is disrupted (Hayne et al., 1997). ...
The specificity of the bilingual advantage in memory was examined by testing groups of monolingual, bilingual, and trilingual 24-month-olds on tasks tapping cued recall, memory generalization and working memory. For the cued recall and memory generalization conditions, there was a 24-h delay between time of encoding and time of retrieval. In addition to the memory tasks, parent-toddler dyads completed a picture-book reading task, in order to observe emotional responsiveness, and a parental report of productive vocabulary. Results indicated no difference between language groups on cued recall, working memory, emotional responsiveness, or productive vocabulary, but a significant difference was found in the memory generalization condition with only the bilingual group outperforming the baseline control group. These results replicate and extend results from past studies (Brito and Barr, 2012, 2014; Brito et al., 2014) and suggest a bilingual advantage specific to memory generalization.
... Infants exhibit age-related changes in the range of cues that can support memory retrieval (see Hayne & Barr, this volume, for a review). Older infants are more likely to demonstrate evidence of memory even when the original focal or contextual cues (e.g., visual or olfactory stimuli, experimenter, environmental surround) are not present at the time of retrieval (operant: Butler & Rovee-Collier, 1989;Hartshorn et al., 1998a;DI: Hanna & Meltzoff, 1993;Hayne et al., 1997;VPC: Jones et al., 2011). These ontogenetic changes in memory flexibility are potentially the result of more frequent and varied experiences with encoding information in a range of settings (see Varied Experience), which over time could support infants' ability to utilize a wider variety of retrieval cues (Hayne, 2006). ...
This chapter reviews the most widely used paradigms to assess memory in human infants (e.g., operant conditioning, preferential looking, and imitation). We focus on resulting core principles of early memory development encompassing encoding speed as well as memory duration, retrieval, and flexibility. The field is well-grounded in experimental investigations; considerably less is known about potential underlying mechanisms and sources of variation contributing to ontogenetic changes in infant memory. Using a biopsychosocial framework, this chapter considers the bidirectional, interactive networks of biological, psychological, and social variables critical to early memory development. Relevant empirical work on human and non-human infants is highlighted, including examinations of neurobiology, varied experience, adversity, sleep, and socialization. Further, the present chapter discusses functional approaches to infant memory development, including evidence of developmental reversals (e.g., superior memory performance in younger, developing individuals as compared to their older counterparts). We consider how developing biological systems are adapted to meet changing ecological demands. Future directions for the field are discussed within the context of integrative approaches that can provide more holistic understanding of ontogenetic changes in memory.
... At nine months, children show flexible application of sequence knowledge across different stimuli (Lukowski et al., 2009). Toddlers extend newly acquired knowledge onto novel stimuli from 12 to 21 months (Hayne et al., 1997) and successfully generalize event knowledge across different instantiations at 16 and 20 months (Bauer & Dow, 1994). In early to middle childhood, children improve Generalization and memory specificity in childhood 5 in their ability to generalize across more complex demands, such as integrating novel facts or generalizing across semantic categories (Ngo et al., 2021). ...
Adaptive memories are formed in the face of a fundamental tension: extracting commonalities across experiences to generate novel inferences (i.e., generalization), while simultaneously forming separate representations of similar events (i.e., memory specificity). Theoretical memory models suggest that specific experiences are initially encoded as hippocampus-dependent episodic memories and slowly become amenable to generalization through consolidation. Post-learning sleep facilitates such consolidation processes. However, generalization can also occur rapidly during wakefulness. Contemporary models propose that rapid generalization relies on the retrieval of specific episodes. In a sample of 141 four- to eight-year-old children, we investigated whether (i) age differentially relates to generalization and memory specificity, (ii) generalization is contingent on different aspects of past experiences, and (iii) the effect of a sleep-filled delay on generalization and memory specificity differs across age. We found age-related differences in generalization and memory specificity, with improvements with age being more pronounced in generalization than in memory specificity. Unlike prior evidence in adults, children’s generalization success was contingent on retrieving specific object conceptual properties and on inter-object semantic proximity, but not on perceptual attributes or surrounding contexts. Further, older children were more likely to retain general and specific aspects of memory after an overnight delay. However, age-related gains differed across memory functions: Compared to younger children, older children showed greater gains in generalized, but not in specific memories. These findings reveal those aspects of past experiences upon which children draw when creating inferences, and suggest that the effects of sleep on generalization and memory specificity interact with age.
... In particular, changes in rsFC patterns over time have been shown to relate to development, indexed with chronological age, in childhood and adulthood (Nielsen et al., 2019;Dosenbach et al., 2010), as well as the first year of life (Pruett et al., 2015). However, rsFC's reliability and utility in tracking development in the second year of life-a period marked by many developmental milestones (Lewis, Ramsay, 2004;Hayne, MacDonald, and Barr, 1997;Courage, and Howe, 2002) but one of understudied functional brain architecture (Edde et al., 2021)-is unclear. In the current work, we evaluate the reliability of rsFC patterns in infants between the ages of 8-26 months and characterize its relationship to chronological age. ...
Resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) measured with fMRI has been used to characterize functional brain maturation in typically and atypically developing children and adults. However, its reliability and utility for predicting development in infants and toddlers is less well-understood. Here, we use fMRI data from the Baby Connectome Project study to measure the reliability and uniqueness of rsFC in infants and toddlers and predict age in this sample (8-to-26 months old; n = 170). We observed medium reliability for within-session infant rsFC in our sample, and found that individual infant and toddler’s connectomes were sufficiently distinct for successful functional connectome fingerprinting. Next, we trained and tested support vector regression models to predict age-at-scan with rsFC. Models successfully predicted novel infants’ age within ± 3.6 months error and a prediction R² =.51. To characterize the anatomy of predictive networks, we grouped connections into 11 infant-specific resting-state functional networks defined in a data-driven manner. We found that connections between regions of the same network —i.e. within-network connections—predicted age significantly better than between-network connections. Looking ahead, these findings can help characterize changes in functional brain organization in infancy and toddlerhood and inform work predicting developmental outcome measures in this age range.
... In contrast, another child may hear the word dog in a narrow range of places and speakers (e.g., only at the park and only from their father). Understanding how different contextual distributions relate to the words young children say is crucial because research suggests context robustly affects basic learning and memory across a broad range of circumstances (e.g., see Borovsky & Rovee-Collier, 1990;Edgin et al., 2014;Godden & Baddeley, 1975;Hartshorn et al., 1998;Hayne et al., 1997Hayne et al., , 2000Learmonth et al., 2004;Rovee-Collier et al., 1985;Rovee-Collier & Dufault, 1991;S. M. Smith, 1982;Suss et al., 2012;Wojcik, 2013). ...
Children learn what words mean from hearing words used across a variety of contexts. Understanding how different contextual distributions relate to the words young children say is critical because context robustly affects basic learning and memory processes. This study examined children's everyday experiences using naturalistic video recordings to examine two contextual factors-where words are spoken and who speaks the words-through analyzing the nouns in language input and children's own language productions. The families in the study (n = 8) were two-parent, dual-income, middle-class families with a child between 1 year, 3 months to 4 years, 4 months (age M = 3 years, 5 months) and at least one additional sibling. The families were filmed as they interacted in their homes and communities over 2 weekdays and 2 weekend days. From these videos, we identified when the focal child was exposed to language input and randomly selected 9 hr of contiguous speech segments per family to obtain 6,129 noun types and 30,257 noun tokens in language input and 1,072 noun types and 5,360 noun tokens in children's speech. We examined whether the words that children heard in more variable spatial and speaker contexts were produced with greater frequency by children. The results suggest that both the number of places and the number of speakers that characterized a child's exposure to a noun were positively associated with the child's production of that noun, independent of how frequently the word was spoken. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).
... For example, in a deferred imitation study 6-month-old infants struggled to retrieve their memories across a change in physical context (home vs. laboratory, Barr et al., 1996). During the second year of life, infants become increasingly able to retrieve their memories across changes in context and learning material (Hayne et al., 1997. In the context of the present study, 2-year-olds' ability to distract themselves in different ways after observing the model doing so in one particular way (active vs. calm) might suggest that they extracted the gist of the model's behavior and applied this knowledge broadly (e.g., using stimuli that the model had not used herself). ...
Little is known about toddlers’ acquisition of specific emotion regulation (ER) strategies, and how early ER is shaped by temperament. This study investigated if 24-month-old German toddlers, predominantly from families with high levels of parental education (N = 96, n = 49 male), learned the ER strategy distraction through observational learning, and its interaction with temperament. Increased use of distraction correlated with reduced negative affect. Use of distraction in- creased through observational learning. Highly active toddlers tended to use ac- tive playing activities to distract themselves in a frustrating situation, whereas toddlers with a less active temperament used calmer activities. Toddlers’ learning to apply distraction through observational learning was independent of a match between their own temperament and the model's actions.
... For example, Herbert and Hayne (2000a) reported an impressive sixfold increase in memory duration between 18 and 24 months of age. In terms of retrieval, infants become more flexible in accessing their memories across a change in circumstances with increasing age (Hayne, Boniface, & Barr, 2000;Hayne, MacDonald, & Barr, 1997). For example, while 6-month-old infants failed to retrieve their memory about the workings of a hand puppet when tested in a different location after 24h, infants aged 12 months and older were not affected by this context change (e.g., Hayne et al., 2000). ...
During the first year of life, infants devote the majority of their time to sleep. Research in adults has shown that sleep supports a variety of memory processes. Surprisingly, sleep's function for infant memory has only started to receive attention in research. In this chapter, we will describe age-related changes in sleep and in memory processing over the first years of life, as well as methods to capture both sleep and memory. Then, we will review current findings on the effects of sleep on memory processing in infants. Lastly, we will also point out gaps in current knowledge and describe potential avenues for future research. Overall, the results of recent experimental studies provide evidence that timely, extended napping is involved in how memories are encoded and stored in the long-term and contribute to the formation of knowledge networks in infants.
... These changes gradually enable infants to generalize previously learned information to a wider range of circumstances. Nevertheless, even older infants struggle to retrieve recently encoded memories if any essential aspect of a learning experience change, such as the social context or aspects of originally encountered stimuli (Hayne, MacDonald, & Barr, 1997;Learmonth, Lamberth, & Rovee-Collier, 2005). Given this profound reliance on matching external cues, infant memory might be highly susceptible to variations in internal state. ...
Why do infants remember some things and not others? Human infants frequently cycle through different states such as calm attentiveness, wakeful activity, and crying. Given that cognitive processes do not occur in isolation, such fluctuations in internal state might influence memory processing. In the present experiment, declarative memory in 9-month-old infants (N = 96) was heavily state dependent. Infants exhibited excellent retention of a deferred imitation task after a 15-min delay if their state at encoding was identical to their state at retrieval (e.g., calm). Infants failed to exhibit retention if their state at encoding was different from their state at retrieval (e.g., calm vs. animated). Infant memory processing depends on internal cues.
... As infants develop, they are better able to retrieve memories despite changes in cues and context, thereby allowing learning to be generalized to novel situations (Eichenbaum, 1997). For example, previous research demonstrated that monolingual infants were unable to generalize memory of a 3-step imitation procedure across two distinct puppets (a yellow duck and a black/white cow) at 18-months, whereas they could do so 3 months later at 21-months (Hayne, Macdonald & Barr, 1997). Brito and Barr (2012) replicated this task with 18-month-old infants and found that bilinguals outperformed monolinguals on this memory generalization task. ...
Past studies have reported memory differences between monolingual and bilingual infants (Brito & Barr, 2012; Singh, Fu, Rahman, Hameed, Sanmugam, Agarwal, Jiang, Chong, Meaney & Rifkin-Graboi, 2015). A common critique within the bilingualism literature is the absence of socioeconomic indicators and/or a lack of socioeconomic diversity among participants. Previous research has demonstrated robust bilingual differences in memory generalization from 6- to 24-months of age. The goal of the current study was to examine if these findings would replicate in a sample of 18-month-old monolingual and bilingual infants from a range of socioeconomic backgrounds (N = 92). Results indicate no differences between language groups on working memory or cued recall, but significant differences for memory generalization, with bilingual infants outperforming monolingual infants regardless of socioeconomic status (SES). These findings replicate and extend results from past studies (Brito & Barr, 2012; Brito, Sebastián-Gallés & Barr, 2015) and suggest possible differential learning patterns dependent on linguistic experience.
... Hence, early memories are characterized by a high degree of specificity. To our knowledge, there is no evidence that generalization in infants improves when the stored representation of an experience weakens (Hayne, MacDonald, & Barr, 1997; but see Werchan & G omez, 2014, for different findings on sleeprelated language processing in 2½-year-olds). ...
Research with adults has shown that a person's internal context, or state, influences how memory functions. This factor is rarely considered in research on infant memory, in part because of the practical and ethical difficulties of manipulating these variables in infants. In this article, we argue that models of infant memory will remain limited in scope and accuracy if the internal context of participants is not considered. As a case in point, we present emerging literature on sleep‐dependent memory. Our review shows that for infants, timely sleep after a learning experience helps them retain and further process new memories. Studies need to explore the role of prior sleep for encoding, and to tease apart the contributions to infant memory of different types, features, and stages of sleep. We conclude that considering internal states, such as sleep, is necessary for developing a deeper understanding of early human memory.
... Hanna & Meltzoff, 1993;Hayne, Boniface, & Barr, 2000;Hayne, MacDonald, & Barr, 1997). ...
In this article, we review recent empirical and theoretical work on infant memory development, highlighting future directions for the field. We consider the state of the field since Carolyn Rovee‐Collier's call for developmental scientists to “shift the focus from what to why,” emphasizing the function of infant behavior and the value of integrating fractionized, highly specialized subfields. We discuss functional approaches of early learning and memory, including ecological models of memory development and relevant empirical work in human and non‐human organisms. Ontogenetic changes in learning and memory occur in developing biological systems, which are embedded in broader socio‐cultural contexts with shifting ecological demands that are in part determined by the infants themselves. We incorporate biopsychosocial and dynamical systems perspectives as we analyze the state of the field's integration of multiple areas of specialization to provide more holistic understanding of the contributing factors and underlying mechanisms of the development of memory.
... It remains an open question whether toddlers could transfer the modeled strategy to a different situation where distraction might be a useful emotion regulation strategy, too. It has been shown that imitation across changes in cues such as context and stimuli is challenging for toddlers (Barnat et al. 1996;Hayne et al. 2000;Hayne et al. 1997). Hence, a future study could explore whether toddlers also use distraction in a different context after modeling (e.g., different physical context or different type of frustrating situation). ...
Emotion regulation strategies have been linked to the development of mental disorders. In this experiment, we investigated if imitation is an effective way of learning to increase the usage of the emotion regulation strategy ‘distraction’ for 22-month-old toddlers. Toddlers in two experimental conditions participated in two waiting situations intended to elicit frustration, with a modeling situation between the first and the second waiting situation. In the modeling situation, toddlers observed how either a familiar model (parent) or an unfamiliar model (experimenter) demonstrated the use of distraction as a strategy to cope with a frustrating situation. Toddlers in an additional age-matched control condition did not witness any modeling between the two waiting situations. Analyses revealed that toddlers in both experimental conditions combined distracted themselves more in the second waiting situation than did toddlers in the control condition. There were no differences with regard to the familiarity of the model. These results suggest that providing structured observational learning situations may be a useful way to teach toddlers about the use of specific emotion regulation strategies.
... As a result, demands of the memory retrieval process may differ based on the contextual cues at the time of retrieval. During early development, children struggle to retrieve altered details from experienced past events (Hayne & Herbert, 2004;Hayne, MacDonald, & Barr, 1997) but can retrieve such details under conditions of direct reinstatement (DeMaster, Coughlin, & Ghetti, 2016;Hudson & Sheffield, 1999). We chose to examine whether young children's ability to retrieve past information for the future was similarly influenced by conditions of direct reinstatement versus altered details. ...
... Hayne and colleagues (Barr, Dowden, & Hayne, 1996;Collie & Hayne, 1999;Hayne, MacDonald, & Barr, 1997;Herbert & Hayne, 2000a, 2000b have also investigated developmental changes in deferred imitation by 6-to 30-month-old infants and found that even the youngest infants showed evidence of deferred imitation on a series of as many as eight unique actions with various toy props following a 24-hr delay. However, significant developmental improvements were also evident over the age range studied. ...
The authors review several key areas of early cognitive development in which an abrupt shift in ability at the end of the second year of life has been traditionally assumed. These areas include deferred imitation, self-recognition, language, and categorization. Contrary to much conventional theorizing, the evidence shows robust continuities in all domains of early cognitive development. Where there is evidence of a reorganization of behavior that makes a new level of performance possible, dynamic-systems analyses indicate that even these may be driven by underlying processes that are continuous, Although there remain significant definitional and methodological issues to be resolved, the outcome of this review augers well for newer models in which cognitive development is viewed as a continuous, dynamic process.
... One study established that 18-month-olds generalize and imitate after changes in color and shape over longer delays than 12-month-olds (Hayne, MacDonald, & Barr, 1997). Changes in the shape of an object, in particular, seem to disrupt 12-month-olds' abilities to generalize and imitate (Jones & Herbert, 2008); however, certain cues can help (Herbert, 2011;Jones & Herbert, 2008). ...
... More important for present purposes, it is not clear whether delayed imitation tasks rely on semantic or on episodic memory. Data that show developmentally-increasing generalization of memory for event sequences to new props or contexts (e.g., Cuevas, Rovee-Collier & Learmonth, 2006, Hayne, Boniface & Barr, 2000Hayne, MacDonald & Barr, 1997;Herbert, Gross & Hayne, 2007) suggest the likelihood that the representations that children have formed are primarily semantic. For example, they learn that if you put a hard round object into a container that you can close and then shake, you have made a rattle. ...
This chapter examines the development of one fundamental feature of episodic recollection, namely, the capacity to bind different features of an event into an integrated representation. It distinguishes this capacity from the operation of strategies and other forms of controlled mechanisms that promote and monitor binding operations. It examines the development of binding during childhood and integrates this knowledge with a lifespan perspective and investigations with nonhuman animals. It offers comments on how binding might affect the emergence and development not only of episodic memory, but also of other faculties conceptually linked to episodic memory, such as mental travel time and imagining the future.
... Furthermore, although 18-month-olds exhibited a high degree of representational flexibility in the puppet task, if the imitation task is made more complex, the developmental trajectory for representational flexibility is even more protracted. When tested using a more difficult imitation task, infants do not exhibit clear evidence of representational flexibility until approximately 30 months of age (Hayne, MacDonald, & Barr, 1997;Herbert & Hayne, 2000a). ...
In this experiment, we used the deferred imitation paradigm to assess 24-month-olds’ ability to use conceptual similarity to solve new problems after a delay. Infants in the experimental condition participated in four sessions that were each separated by 24 h. In Session 1, the experimenter modeled three target actions using one set of stimuli and in Session 2, infants were tested with a novel set of stimuli that could be used to perform the same target actions. To emphasize the functional similarity of the two sets of stimuli, the experimenter provided the same unique verbal label for them during the demonstration (Session 1) and the test (Session 2). In Session 3, the experimenter modeled three new target actions with another new set of stimuli, and in Session 4, infants were tested with a novel set of stimuli that could be used to perform these same target actions. No verbal cues were provided during Sessions 3 and 4. Infants in the experimental condition exhibited excellent imitation during Session 4 even though they were tested with completely different stimuli in the absence of verbal cues. The performance of the control groups illustrated that imitation in Session 4 was not based on prior successful imitation alone or on exposure to multiple stimuli across successive sessions. Instead, we conclude that infants used the conceptual relation between the imitation problems as a basis of knowledge transfer.
... Indeed, it has been suggested that this ability subsequently evolves during the first 2 years of life in humans to become more elaborate with age (Bauer, San Souci, & Pathman, 2010;de Haan, Mishkin, Baldeweg, & Vargha-Khadem, 2006;Jones & Herbert, 2006). For example, although 12-month-old children are able to perform a deferred imitation task after a 24-hour delay (Barr et al., 1996), their performance is disrupted if the puppet used to learn the sequence of actions (a pastel pink rabbit puppet) is different from the one used during the testing phase (a pale grey mouse puppet; Hayne, MacDonald, & Barr, 1997). In this study the two puppets shared many characteristics, such as the same overall shape, pastel color, eyes, and noses. ...
In 1995, Nelson published a paper describing a model of memory development during the first years of life. The current article seeks to provide an update on the original work published 20 years ago. Specifically, we review our current knowledge on the relation between the emergence of explicit memory functions throughout development and the maturation of associated brain regions. It is now well established that the brain regions subserving explicit memory functions (i.e. the hippocampal formation) are far from mature at birth, and exhibit important and gradual structural changes during childhood and beyond. Accordingly, explicit memory functions develop progressively. While some functions are present shortly after birth (formerly proposed as pre-explicit memory), others exhibit protracted developmental profiles during the first years of life. We examine the link between the emergence of different memory functions and the maturation of specific hippocampal circuits.
... In the imitation task, we used a task of medium difficulty in order to obtain a variation of infants' imitation scores. A widely used task that meets this criterion was the imitation of a threestep action on a puppet mouse (i.e., take off, shake, and put back on a mitten; Barr et al., 1996;Barr & Hayne, 1999;Barr, Rovee-Collier, & Campanella, 2005;Hayne et al., 2000;Hayne, MacDonald, & Barr, 1997). A further advantage of this task is the low baseline rate of producing the target actions, which is an important criterion for an imitation task (Meltzoff, 1988). ...
Detecting self-generated actions and imitating other-generated actions are important abilities in order to interact with others. The relationship between these domains was investigated in 6–8-month-old infants. In a contingency-preference task, infants observed their own legs on a real-time and a delayed video display. In an imitation task, the experimenter demonstrated a three-step action directed at a puppet mouse. The Cognitive Scale of the Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development was administered in order to control
for the infants’ cognitive developmental status. A negative correlation was found between the proportion of time spent looking at the delayed display in the contingency-preference task and the imitation score in the imitation task. This indicates that the lower the infants’ preference for the delayed video image, the more likely they were to imitate. The correlation between contingency preference and imitation remained even after controlling for cognitive developmental status. Thus, a basic interest in high contingency might
underlie the preference for observing self-generated actions and imitating other-generated actions
... Memory and generalization are affected by the context in which information is learned and tested. Specifically, recall is more accurate when the information in recalled in the same context in which it was learned (e.g., Borovsky & Rovee-Collier, 1990;Godden & Baddeley, 1975;Hartshorn et al., 1998;Hayne, Boniface, & Barr, 2000;Hayne, MacDonald, & Barr, 1997;Learmonth, Lamberth, & Rovee-Collier, 2004;Rovee-Collier & Dufault, 1991;Rovee-Collier, Griesler, & Earley, 1985;Smith 1982;Suss, Gaylord & Fagen, 2012). Context dependency has been robustly demonstrated across a wide range of contexts, tasks and ages (Amabile & Rovee-Collier, 1991;Smith, Glenberg, & Bjork, 1978) Likewise, young word learners' ability to generalize category labels is context dependent. ...
Infants and children have difficulty categorizing objects in new contexts. However, learning in both same and varied contexts can help young word learners overcome contextual learning difficulties. We examined the relation between infants' visual attention to the category member and background context during learning and their ability to generalize a new category member in a new context. Of particular interest is how this relation is affected by learning in various contextual conditions. Infants (16-20 months; n=48) were presented with eight novel noun categories in one of three contextual conditions (same context, varied context, or a combination of same and varied contexts), and tested for their generalization ability in a new context. Context was defined as the colored and patterned fabric upon which the object was presented. Results suggest that visual attention during learning is associated with category generalization ability in a new context only for infants whose learning took place in a combination of same and varied background contexts. The results are discussed in terms of the mechanisms by which context affects generalization.
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Memory enables generalization to new situations, and memory specificity that preserves individual episodes. This study investigated generalization, memory specificity, and their overnight fate in 141 4‐ to 8‐year‐olds (computerized memory game; 71 females, tested 2020–2021 in Germany). The results replicated age effects in generalization and memory specificity, and a contingency of generalization on object conceptual properties and interobject semantic proximity. Age effects were stronger in generalization than in memory specificity, and generalization was more closely linked to the explicit regularity knowledge in older than in younger children. After an overnight delay, older children retained more generalized and specific memories and showed greater gains but only in generalization. These findings reveal distinct age differences in generalization and memory specificity across childhood.
Bilingualism is a ubiquitous global phenomenon. Beyond being a language experience, bilingualism also entails a social experience, and it interacts with development and learning, with cognitive and neural consequences across the lifespan. The authors of this volume are world renowned experts across several subdisciplines including linguistics, developmental psychology, and cognitive neuroscience. They bring to light bilingualism’s cognitive, developmental, and neural consequences in children, young adults, and older adults. This book honors Ellen Bialystok, and highlights her profound impact on the field of bilingualism research as a lifelong experience. The chapters are organized into four sections: The first section explores the complexity of the bilingual experience beyond the common characterization of “speaking multiple languages.” The next section showcases Ellen Bialystok’s earlier impact on psychology and education; here the contributors answer the question “how does being bilingual shape children’s development?” The third section explores cognitive and neuroscientific theories describing how language experience modulates cognition, behavior, and brain structures and functions. The final section shifts the focus to the impact of bilingualism on healthy and abnormal aging and asks whether being bilingual can stave off the effects of dementia by conferring a “cognitive reserve.”
Statistical learning enables learners to extract the environmental regularities necessary to piece together the structure of their worlds. The capacity for statistical learning and its properties are likely to change across development from infancy to adulthood. Acknowledging this developmental change has broad implications for understanding the cognitive architecture of statistical learning and why children excel in certain learning situations relative to adults. In this Review, we first synthesize empirical work on the development of statistical learning, which indicates that it improves with development only for certain forms of input. Taking inspiration from related cognitive and neural findings, we then consider developmental changes in the properties of statistical learning. Infants and young children might have a broader and less-directed curriculum for learning and represent the outcomes of learning differently from older children and adults. This synthesis offers insight into how developmental changes in statistical learning from infancy through adulthood might fundamentally alter how children interact with, learn about, and remember their experiences. From infancy, humans learn the regularities of their world using statistical learning. In this Review, Forest et al. consider how statistical learning changes quantitatively and qualitatively across development, considering influences on the input to learning and the resulting memory representations.
Across cultures, imitation provides a crucial route to learning during infancy. However, neural predictors which would enable early identification of infants at risk of suboptimal developmental outcomes are still rare. In this paper, we examine associations between ERP markers of habituation and novelty detection measured at 1 and 5 months of infant age in the UK (n = 61) and rural Gambia (n = 214) and infants’ responses on a deferred imitation task at 8 and 12 months. In both cohorts, habituation responses at 5 months significantly predicted deferred imitation responses at 12 months of age in both cohorts. Furthermore, ERP habituation responses explained a unique proportion of variance in deferred imitation scores which could not be accounted for by a neurobehavioural measure (Mullen Scales of Early Learning) conducted at 5 months of age. Our findings highlight the potential for ERP markers of habituation and novelty detection measured before 6 months of age to provide insight into later imitation abilities and memory development across diverse settings.
Scientists have long employed puppets in research with young children; this essay explores the validity of this practice. After considering what puppets are, their main types and history, I note the different ways puppets have been employed in research. One of these uses raises the issue of whether and when children apply their theory of mind to puppets. After exploring this issue, I consider if children believe puppets actually are animate and sentient, like humans, and whether children participating in experiments with puppets are pretending (in the sense of pretend play) that puppet stimuli are human. Children aged three years and older and infants are discussed separately, as different definitions of puppets have been used in the research across these age levels and different patterns of results have been obtained. I end with ideas regarding further research.
Learning abilities are present in infancy, as they are critical for adaptation. From simple habituation and novelty responses to stimuli, learning capacities evolve throughout the lifespan. During development, learning abilities become more flexible and integrated across sensory modalities, allowing the encoding of more complex information, and in larger amounts. In turn, an increasing knowledge base leads to adaptive changes in behavior, making responses and actions more precise and effective. The objective of this chapter is to review the main behavioral manifestations of human learning abilities in early development and their biologic underpinnings, ranging from the cellular level to neurocognitive systems and mechanisms. We first focus on the ability to learn from repetitions of stimuli and how years of research in this field have recently contributed to theories of fundamental brain mechanisms whose implications for cognitive development are under study. The ability to memorize associations between different items and events is addressed next as we review the variety of contexts in which this associative memory and its neurologic bases come into play. Together, repetition-based learning and associative memory provide powerful means of understanding the surrounding environment, not only through the gathering and consolidation of specific types of information, but also by continually testing and adjusting stored information to better adapt to changing conditions.
This articles is a commentary on the hypothesis that emotion experience is conceptual and verbal. It is critical of this view and summarizes evidence that simulatins and predictions of experience as discussed in the neuroscience perspective occur prior to language and that such experiences co-occur with affect. Further, we suggest that such affect is coded as part of the contextual memories that nonverbal infants have and are the basis of their emotional experience prior to language onset.
We examined whether 15-month-olds could imitate a novel action sequence from a picture book, and whether or not pre-exposure to the objects before reading the book would facilitate imitation. We found that infants only imitated from a picture book above baseline when they had previously interacted with the objects.
The provision of verbal labels enhances 12-month-old infants’ memory flexibility across a form change in a puppet imitation task (Herbert, 2011), although the mechanisms for this effect remain unclear. Here we investigate whether verbal labels can scaffold flexible memory retrieval when task difficulty increases and consider the mechanism responsible for the effect of language cues on early memory flexibility. Twelve-month-old infants were provided with English, Chinese, or empty language cues during a difficult imitation task, a combined change in the puppet’s colour and form at the test (Hayne et al., 1997). Imitation performance by infants in the English language condition only exceeded baseline performance after the 10-minute delay. Thus, verbal labels facilitated flexible memory retrieval on this task. There were no correlations between infants’ language comprehension and imitation performance. Thus, it is likely that verbal labels facilitate both attention and categorisation during encoding and retrieval.
The ability to recall the past allows us to report on details of previous experiences, from the everyday to the significant. Because recall memory is commonly assessed using verbal report paradigms in adults, studying the development of this ability in preverbal infants and children proved challenging. Over the past 30 years, researchers have developed a non-verbal means of assessing recall memory known as the elicited or deferred imitation paradigm. In one variant of the procedure, participants are presented with novel three-dimensional stimuli for a brief baseline period before a researcher demonstrates a series of actions that culminate in an end- or goal-state. The participant is allowed to imitate the demonstrated actions immediately, after a delay, or both. Recall performance is then compared to baseline or to performance on novel control sequences presented at the same session; memory can be assessed for the individual target actions and the order in which they were completed. This procedure is an accepted analogue to the verbal report techniques used with adults, and it has served to establish a solid foundation of the nature of recall memory in infancy and early childhood. In addition, the elicited or deferred imitation procedure has been modified and adapted to answer questions relevant to other aspects of cognitive functioning. The broad utility and application of imitation paradigms is discussed, along with limitations of the approach and directions for future research.
One of the most consistent findings in the area of infant memory development is that memory retrieval occurs if, and only if, the cues present at the time of retrieval are virtually identical to stimuli encountered during original encoding. The specificity of the cues required to initiate memory retrieval means that infants' ability to use their prior knowledge to solve new problems is very limited, particularly early in development. Over the course of both age and experience, however, infants begin to exploit a wider range of effective retrieval cues, applying potentially useful memories to situations different from those encountered when those memories were originally established. These developmental changes in memory retrieval provide a model for the way in which knowledge accumulates and accrues during the infancy period.
IntroductionResearch on Infant Learning and MemoryIssues in Infant MemoryConclusions
Throughout infancy and into early childhood, there are significant developments in the duration of time over which memories are maintained and in the robustness of infants' memories. In the preschool years, there are additional changes in recall of both routine and unique events, as well as in the reports that children provide about their memories. Changes in memory behavior arise in part from developments in the neural circuitry that supports long-term recall. The substrate undergoes a protracted course of development throughout infancy and beyond, making it a likely source of variance in memory behavior. This chapter explores the implications of developments in the neural substrate for each of the basic processes involved in long-term memory, namely, encoding, consolidation and storage, and retrieval. It provides evidence that variability in encoding processes, and in consolidation processes in particular, relates to variability in long-term recall.
We effortlessly remember all sorts of events — from simple events like people walking to complex events like leaves blowing in the wind. We can also remember and describe these events, and in general, react appropriately to them, for example, in avoiding an approaching object. Our phenomenal ease interacting with events belies the complexity of the underlying processes we use to deal with them. Driven by an interest in these complex processes, research on even perception has been growing rapidly. Events are the basis of all experience, so understanding how humans perceive, represent, and act on them will have a significant impact on many areas of psychology. Unfortunately, much of the research on event perception — in visual perception, motor control, linguistics, and computer science — has progressed without much interaction. This book brings together computational, neurological, and psychological research on how humans detect, classify, remember, and act on events.
Memory and its development are multifaceted. Different forms of memory have different developmental courses. Some types of nondeclarative memory are apparent early and are relatively developmentally invariant. In contrast, declarative memory in general, and episodic and autobiographical memory in particular, have a protracted course of development that is related to age-related changes in the basic memory processes of encoding, consolidation, and retrieval, from infancy throughout childhood. In turn, changes in basic memory processes are related to changes in the temporal–cortical network (medial–temporal structures and association cortices) that subserve them.
In 1995, Nelson published a paper describing a model of memory development during the first years of life. The current article seeks to provide an update on the original work published 20 years ago. Specifically, we review our current knowledge on the relation between the emergence of explicit memory functions throughout development and the maturation of associated brain regions. It is now well established that the brain regions subserving explicit memory functions (i.e. the hippocampal formation) are far from mature at birth, and exhibit important and gradual structural changes during childhood and beyond. Accordingly, explicit memory functions develop progressively. While some functions are present shortly after birth (formerly proposed as pre-explicit memory), others exhibit protracted developmental profiles during the first years of life. We examine the link between the emergence of different memory functions and the maturation of specific hippocampal circuits.
The ways in which children use objects is central to many theories of development, yet we lack systematic descriptions of the various ways in which objects are used across childhood. In this paper, I first describe the different forms of object use (i.e., exploration, construction, play, tool use and tool making) for males and females in childhood, then establish time budgets for each type of object use. Second, I make functional inferences about each form of object use and the social contexts in which each is embedded. I suggest that putative functions of object play, specifically, may be related to children's discovery of novel uses for objects, as well as peer group centrality in abundant niches. These dynamics produce a connected social network in which object play and group structure might interact to spread novel ideas.
The roles of function, reminding, and exemplar variability in categorization of a physically dissimilar object were studied with 3-month-old infants trained to move a crib mobile by kicking. Performance on a transfer test with a motionless novel object provided evidence of categorization. In Experiments 1 and 2, infants, like adults, initially categorized novel objects on the basis of physical appearance, but only if trained with multiple exemplars, after delays of 1 and 7 days. In Experiment 3, prior knowledge of an object's functional properties overrode physical dissimilarity as the basis for categorization and enabled reminding of the classification response 2 weeks later. In Experiment 4, postevent contingency information overrode physical and functional properties as the basis for categorization. These findings indicate that expectations and goals influence infants' category decisions and raise the possibility that infants of 3 months respond by analogy.
Investigated whether reinstatement effects, i.e., increased retention of early learned behavior in animals, might also be operable in children. A total of 72 Ss in 2 age groups (5-8 and 8-11 yr.) received (a) a paired-associates retention task (initial learning) and the same task 8 wk. later (final learning), (b) a story containing the pairs between initial and final learning sessions (reinstatement training), or (c) reinstatement training followed 4 wk. later by initial learning. Reinstatement of the original pairs was not sufficient to produce learning of the pairs but did significantly increase the retention of the previously learned material. No age or sex differences in long-term memory were observed.
Thirty-six 2-, 4-, and 6-month-old infants were videotaped while interacting with a female adult stranger engaging in either organized or disorganized 1-min peekaboo games. Two-month-old infants gazed and smiled equally at the stranger, regardless of the relative organization of the peekaboo game. In contrast, 4- and 6-month-old infants smiled significantly more and gazed significantly less in the organized peekaboo condition than in the disorganized peekaboo condition. These results suggest that from a diffuse sensitivity to the presence of a social partner, infants by 4 months develop a new sensitivity to the narrative envelope of protoconversation, in particular the timing and the structure of social exchanges scaffolded by adults. These observations are interpreted as evidence of developing social expectations in the first 6 months of life. This early development is viewed as announcing and preparing the communicative competence that blossoms by the end of the 1st year.
Presents a series of studies investigating the dimension along which words are encoded, using the "release from proactive inhibition" in short-term memory technique. Results indicate that semantic dimensions (taxonomic categories or semantic differential) are highly effective, whereas physical characteristics, i.e., word length or figure-ground colors of the slide presentation are relatively ineffective in releasing proactive inhibition. Results of this technique of measuring encoding are related to other types of experiments on verbal material as well as to the topic of subception and imageless thought. (36 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Three experiments tested (1) whether 1–2 yr olds generalize their knowledge of events to new instantiations and (2) 1 possible mechanism by which generalization is accomplished. In Exp 1, 12 16- and 12 20-mo-old children enacted 6 event sequences. One week later Ss were tested for delayed recall. At delayed testing the props used to enact half of the events were replaced by novel, functionally equivalent props. Ss in both age groups used the new props to enact the events, thereby demonstrating spontaneous generalization. Exps 2 and 3 tested whether generalization was accomplished through forgetting of the specific details of the original event. At Session 1, 24 16- (Exps 2 and 3) and 16 20-mo-olds (Exp 2) enacted 4 events. After a 1-wk delay, Ss selected props used to enact the events at Session 1. Among the objects from which they selected were functionally equivalent props of the sort used to assess generalization in Exp 1. Ss in both age groups performed reliably on the recognition-memory task. Results show that 16- and 20-mo-old children have at their disposal the capacity to productively generalize their knowledge of events to form specific, episodic event memories. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Conceptualizes a memory as a collection of attributes which serve to discriminate 1 memory from another and to act as retrieval mechanisms for a target memory. The attributes identified are temporal, spatial, frequency, modality, orthographic and associative nonverbal and verbal. (50 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Six-month-old infants trained in an operant conditioning procedure were allowed to forget the contingency and were presented with a reminder in a memory-reactivation paradigm. The time course of memory retrieval after the reminder, the relation between the forgetting functions of the newly acquired and the reactivated memory, and the potential contribution of the context to retention after long delays were investigated. Memory retrieval was found to be a time-locked process at 6 months, as at 3 months. Although retrieval was more rapid at the older age, the reactivated memory was more transient than the newly acquired memory at 6 months and remained accessible for a briefer period than at 3 months. A distinctive context was requisite for memory reactivation at 6 months but did not insure it. These studies reveal that the temporal parameters of memory processing change with age. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Most theories dealing with ill-defined concepts assume that performance is based on category level information or a mixture of category level and specific item information. A context theory of classification is described in which judgments are assumed to derive exclusively from stored exemplar information. The main idea is that a probe item acts as a retrieval cue to access information associated with stimuli similar to the probe. The predictions of the context theory are contrasted with those of a class of theories (including prototype theory) that assume that the information entering into judgments can be derived from an additive combination of information from component cue dimensions. Across 4 experiments with 128 paid Ss, using both geometric forms and schematic faces as stimuli, the context theory consistently gave a better account of the data. The relation of context theory to other theories and phenomena associated with ill-defined concepts is discussed in detail. (42 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Recent changes in pretheoretical orientation toward problems of human memory have brought with them a concern with retrieval processes, and a number of early versions of theories of retrieval have been constructed. This paper describes and evaluates explanations offered by these theories to account for the effect of extralist cuing, facilitation of recall of list items by non-list items. Experiments designed to test the currently most popular theory of retrieval, the generation-recognition theory, yielded results incompatible not only with generation-recognition models, but most other theories as well: under certain conditions subjects consistently failed to recognize many recallable list words. Several tentative explanations of this phenomenon of recognition failure were subsumed under the encoding specificity principle according to which the memory trace of an event and hence the properties of effective retrieval cue are determined by the specific encoding operations performed by the system on the input stimuli. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Three experiments examined peer imitation with 14- to 18-mo-old infants. In Exp 1, infants saw a trained 14-mo-old ("expert peer") perform specific actions on 5 objects. Imitation from memory was tested after a 5-min delay. In Exp 2, the infants observed an expert peer in the laboratory, and retention and imitation were tested in the home (change of context) after a 2-day delay. In Exp 3, a peer demonstrated target acts at a day care, and after a 2-day delay infants were tested in their homes. Results from all 3 experiments showed significant imitation compared with controls. The experiments demonstrate social learning from peers during infancy and also provide the first evidence for infant imitation from memory across a change in context. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Notes that memory deficits in animals may be alleviated by reactivation treatments. Deficits arising from various sources-experimentally induced amnesia, immaturity, interference, state-dependence-are similarly affected. Perhaps these sources of forgetting impair the retrieval of memories by common mechanisms, either in terms of retrieval effectiveness or by altering the retrieval process itself. The present paper attempts to integrate this material through a preliminary, broad view of memory retrieval. (6 p. ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Attempted to determine the necessary and sufficient conditions needed to demonstrate reinstatement effects, e.g., increased retention of previously learned behavior, in young children. 40 1st graders were divided into 5 groups which were required to learn a paired-associate task and 8 wk. later relearn the same task. 4 wk. after the initial learning, 4 groups received exposure to either the stimulus items only, response items only, stimulus items paired with response items, or the 10 stimulus items plus 10 additional items. The savings in relearning indicates that presenting the response is a necessary condition for producing reinstatement in children in tasks of this type. Presenting the stimulus items alone or embedded among 10 additional stimuli did nothing to improve retention. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The relation between early memory development and corresponding changes in brain development is explored in this article. It is proposed that a form of preexplicit memory (dependent on the hippocampus) develops in the 1st few months. Between 8 and 12 mo, a more adultlike form of explicit memory emerges, which draws broadly on limbic and cortical structures. Two types of implicit memory also make their appearance in the 1st few months: procedural learning (dependent on striatal structures) and conditioning ( which may rely on the olivary-cerebellar complex and possibly the hippocampus). Finally, working memory (dependent on the prefrontal cortex and associated neural circuitry) is also present early in life, although the ability to use working memory when motoric ability is also required (e.g., reaching for hidden objects) has a protracted developmental course relative to other forms of memory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Five experiments examined the effects of environmental context on recall and recognition. In Experiment 1, variability of
input environments produced higher free recall performance than unchanged input environments. Experiment 2 showed improvements
in cued recall when storage and test contexts matched, using a paradigm that unconfounded the variables of context mismatching
and context change. In Experiment 3, recall of categories and recall of words within a category were better for same-context
than different-context recall. In Experiment 4, subjects given identical input conditions showed strong effects of environmental
context when given a free recall test, yet showed no main effects of context on a recognition test. The absence of an environmental
context effect on recognition was replicated in Experiment 5, using a cued recognition task to control the semantic encodings
of test words. In the discussion of these experiments, environmental context is compared with other types of context, and
an attempt is made to identify the memory processes influenced by environmental context.
The present studies were designed to examine the role of place cues in memory retrieval during early infancy. Three-month-old
infants were trained to move a mobile by kicking Two weeks later, memory retrieval was disrupted if they were reminded in
a location or place different from where they had been trained, but not if they were reminded in the same place (Experiment
1A). The same result was obtained even though highly salient cues in their immediate visual surround remained unchanged during
reminding (Experiments 1B and 1C). No disruption was seen, however, when retrieval was cued in a different place after only
1 day (Experiment 2). These findings unequivocally demonstrate that infants as young as 3 months encode incidental information
about the place where an event occurs and suggest that early memories are buffered against retrieval in potentially inappropriate
contexts over the long term.
Developmental changes in imitation were examined in three experiments with 6- to 24-month-old infants. In all experiments, infants in the demonstration condition observed an experimenter perform three specific actions with a puppet. Their ability to reproduce those actions was assessed for the first time during the test in the absence of prior practice. Infants in the control condition received equivalent exposure to the puppet and the experimenter but were not shown the target actions. The results of Experiment 1 showed that 12-, 18-, and 24-month-old infants exhibited clear evidence of imitation following a 24-hour delay (deferred imitation). In addition, the findings of Experiment 1 demonstrated that the 18- and 24-month-old infants reproduced more of the target actions during the test than the 12-month-olds. The results of Experiment 2 showed that 6-month-olds performed as well as 12-month-olds when they were tested in the absence of a delay (immediate imitation). Finally, the results of Experiment 3 showed that, with additional exposure to the target actions, even 6-month-old infants exhibited deferred imitation following a 24-hour delay. Taken together, these findings have important implications for current theories of the development of imitation and memory during the first 2 years of life.
Presents a brief history and review of the short-term and long-term memory distinction and concludes that this distinction is no longer adequate for either human or animal memory data. Simple memories for events are apparently formed quickly and are permanent. In such cases, an initial physiologically unstable period is not required. Thus, most forgetting is the result of a retrieval failure rather than a storage failure. A distinction between active memory (AM) and inactive memory (IM) is made. AM is a subset of IM and contains either newly formed memories or established retrieved memories or both. Implications for psychobiology of the AM and IM distinction are discussed. It is suggested, for example, that while in AM, memories are particularly open to disruption either by amnesic agents or through other forms of interference. The forgetting process for new and established memories is time dependent (but independent of memory age) and is based on interference. It is desirable to maintain the distinction between memory storage and memory retrieval even while recognizing that associative storage aids in retrieval. The search for the biological basis of rapidly forming memories, perhaps based on the restructuring of protein fragments, remains important, but the physiological brain processes underlying memory interference and retrieval require greater emphasis. (5½ p ref)
Five experiments were conducted to determine whether primitive perceptual features, or textons, which Julesz (1984) identified in studies of texture segregation with adults, also affect object recognition early in development. Three-month-old infants discriminated Ts and Ls composed of overlapping line segments from +s but not from each other in a delayed-recognition test after 24 hr; however, Ts and Ls were discriminated from each other after only 1 hr. In a priming paradigm, Ts, Ls, and +s were discriminated from one another after 2 weeks. In succeeding experiments, infants exhibited adultlike visual pop-out effects in both delayed recognition and priming paradigms, detecting an L in the midst of 6 +s and vice versa; these effects were symmetrical. The pop-out effects apparently resulted from parallel search: Infants failed to detect 3 Ls among 4 +s. Clearly, some of the same primitive units that have been identified as the building blocks of adult visual perception underlie object recognition early in infancy.
The study of infant memory has flourished in the past decade for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the tremendous growth of interest in normal and pathological adult memory that began in the late fifties. Despite its common lineage to other areas of memory research, however, infant memory has perhaps been the least integrated into the mainstream. In reading the literature, one gets a sense of discontinuity between the study of infant memory and memory at all other stages of development from childhood to old age. The reasons for this are not hard to find. The techniques used to study memory in infants are usually very different from those typically used even in children. These techniques often limit the kind of inferences one can draw about the nature of the memory systems under investigation. Even when terms, concepts, and theories from the adult literature are applied to infants, they often bear only a loose relationship to their original usage. For example, an infant who stares longer at a new pattern than an old one is said to "recognize" the old one and to have a memory system that shares many characteristics with a memory system that makes recognition possible in adults. Simi larly, an infant who emits a previously learned response, such as a leg kick, to an old stimulus is said to "recall" that response and to be engaged in processes similar to those of adults who are recalling past events.
It is widely thought that the brain of the young infant is not sufficiently developed to store and maintain memories over the long term. The hippocampus, for example, which plays a major role in memory storage and retrieval in adults, is believed to be incompletely functional until the eighth or ninth postnatal month (Bachvalier & Mishkin, 1984; Nadel, Willner, & Kurz, 1985; Nadel & Zola-Morgan, 1984; Schacter & Moscovitch, 1984). Cited in support of this belief is the large body of data that has been gathered over the last two decades via procedures that exploit the young infant’s robust visual response to novel stimuli. This research has consistently obtained evidence of retention on the order of a few seconds or minutes at most (Fagan, 1984; Olson & Strauss, 1984; Sherman, 1985; Werner & Perlmutter, 1979; but see Fagan, 1973).
Studies have shown that procedures that tap long-term memory yield a picture of infant memory radically different from that provided by paradigms involving measures of visual attention. Not only can 2- to 3-month-old infants recognize a specific cue, but they also can remember its predictive significance. In addition, their long-term memories are highly specific. Whether they remember or not on any given occasion depends upon the context, both proximal and distal, in which the retrieval cue is encountered. However, infants' memories are hierarchically organized. They forget specific details of the proximal context more rapidly than its general features; as this occurs, they increasingly exploit distal contextual cues. Distal contextual information sharpens their discrimination of the test situation after increasingly longer delays, thereby protecting the original memory against retrieval in an inappropriate context.
A laboratory procedure is developed that can be used to assess imitation in the second year of life. The procedure uses a blind scoring technique and incorporates control conditions to distinguish infant imitation from spontaneous production of the target behavior. The procedure is used in 2 experiments evaluating the imitation of a simple action with a novel toy. The experiments assess both immediate and deferred imitation in each of 2 age groups, 14-month-olds and 2-year-olds. The deferred imitation task involved a 24-hour delay between the modeling and response periods. There was strong evidence that 2-year-old infants could perform both the immediate and deferred imitation tasks, which was expected. The results also showed that 14-month-olds could succeed in both tasks. The discussion considers the implications of the deferred imitation results in light of current data and theorizing concerning representational capacities and long-term memory in infancy.
Recent research on young children's memory for personal episodes provides new insights into the phenomenon of infantile amnesia, first identified by Freud. New research indicates that children learn to share memories with others, that they acquire the narrative forms of memory recounting, and that such recounts are effective in reinstating experienced memories only after the children can utilize another person's representation of an experience in language as a reinstatement of their own experience. This competence requires a level of mastery of the representational function of language that appears at the earliest in the mid to late preschool years.
In novelty preference studies of categorization, all exemplars are exposed within a single session, and category information is retained for only a few minutes. In mobile studies of categorization, one exemplar is exposed per day, and category information is retained for many days. In five experiments, we asked if exemplar timing affects this retention difference by exposing infants in the mobile paradigm to all category exemplars within each session. Three-month-olds did not recognize a novel category member after 24 hours (Experiment 1) because they did not acquire the category when exemplars were massed (Experiment 2). Six-month-olds recognized a novel category member after 24 hours when the daily exemplar order was random (Experiment 4), and both ages recognized the individual exemplar from Serial Position 1 after 24 hours when the daily exemplar order was constant (Experiment 3 and 5). As a rule, greater spacing between successive items protracts retention. This factor appears largely responsible for paradigmatic differences in infants' long-term memory for category information.
Originally published in 1978, this volume contains the evidence that is most crucial for our understanding the processes of forgetting and retention. Organized in terms of problem areas and issues that are particularly pertinent to understanding these processes, the book deals with both animal and human studies. The author begins by defining the topic and reviewing its historical development. A theoretical orientation follows, and then the author begins to address the major factors that determine what is, and what is not, remembered. Although we cannot yet specify the principles from which we can predict when an episode, once learned, will be remembered well or forgotten entirely, the author demonstrates that such principles are not that far away. He considers the issues that must be resolved before such principles are established, and in the course of doing so covers the major research on why we remember events and why they are forgotten. © 1978 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. All rights reserved.
Presents a series of readings on memory, learning, and language with emphasis on the ways in which information is perceived, selected, transformed, elaborated, and registered. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Elements of episodic memory (Tulving 1983b) consists of three parts. Part I argues for the distinction between episodic and semantic memory as functionally separate albeit closely interacting systems. It begins with a review of the 1972 essay on the topic (Tulving 1972) and its shortcomings, presents a somewhat more complete characterization of the two forms of memory than the one that was possible in 1972, and proceeds to discuss empirical and theoretical reasons for a tentative acceptance of the functional distinction between the two systems and its possible extensions. Part II describes a framework for the study of episodic memory, dubbed General Abstract Processing System (GAPS). The basic unit in such study is an act of remembering. It begins with the witnessing of an event and ends with recollective experience of the event, with related memory performance, or both. The framework specifies a number of components (elements) of the act of remembering and their interrelations, classified under two broad categories of encoding and retrieval. Part III discusses experimental research under the label of “synergistic ecphory.” Ecphory is one of the central elements of retrieval; “synergistic” refers to the joint influence that the stored episodic information and the cognitively present retrieval information exert on the construction of the product of ecphory, the so-called ecphoric information. The concept of encoding specificity and the phenomenon of recognition failure of recallable words figure prominently in Part III. The final chapter of the book describes a model, named the synergistic ecphory model of retrieval, that relates qualitative characteristics of recollective experience and quantitative measures of memory performance in recall and recognition to the conjunction of episodic-memory traces and semantic-memory retrieval cues.
In this study, we investigated how the temporal order and variability of events influence 3- and 5-year-old children's developing event representations. Children participated in 3 different events: a logical-invariant (making fundough), a logical-variable (shape collage), and an arbitrary-invariant (sand play) event. At each age, half of the children experienced the events once prior to recalling the events both verbally and behaviorally; the other half experienced the events 4 times, recalled the events verbally after each experience, and behaviorally reenacted the events only after the last experience. Children verbally recalled more and organized their recall better for the logical events than for the arbitrary event, and these differences remained stable with increasing experience. The sequencing of behavioral recall was also more accurate for the logical events than for the arbitrary event across age and condition, but amount of recall did not differ, with one exception. 3-year-old children in the single experience condition recalled less about the variable event than the invariant events. The results indicate that both the structure of the event and children's representational capabilities influence children's developing representations of events.
• This work, a second edition of which has very kindly been requested, was followed by La Construction du réel chez l'enfant and was to have been completed by a study of the genesis of imitation in the child. The latter piece of research, whose publication we have postponed because it is so closely connected with the analysis of play and representational symbolism, appeared in 1945, inserted in a third work, La formation du symbole chez l'enfant. Together these three works form one entity dedicated to the beginnings of intelligence, that is to say, to the various manifestations of sensorimotor intelligence and to the most elementary forms of expression. The theses developed in this volume, which concern in particular the formation of the sensorimotor schemata and the mechanism of mental assimilation, have given rise to much discussion which pleases us and prompts us to thank both our opponents and our sympathizers for their kind interest in our work. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
In 2 experiments we asked whether training in multiple contexts could eliminate context-dependent memory retrieval at 6 months as it does for adults. We found that 24-hour retention was disrupted when infants were trained in one context and tested in another but not when they were trained in multiple contexts prior to testing in a novel context (Experiment 1). After a long delay, however, training in multiple contexts did not facilitate memory retrieval in a novel context: An otherwise effective retrieval cue (the training mobile) did not alleviate forgetting 3 weeks later when it was presented in a novel context (Experiment 2). These findings demonstrate that multiple learning contexts can override the debilitating effects of an altered context on memory retrieval at 6 months, but only over the short term. The resistance of older memories to retrieval in novel contexts after long periods of disuse may be adaptive, insuring that potentially inappropriate or irrelevant memories will not be expressed.
The ability of 6-month-old infants to remember a functional category acquired in a specific context was assessed in 3 experiments via an operant procedure in which infants learned to perform a specific action (a footkick) to activate an object suspended before them. In Experiment 1, infants trained with different exemplars in the same context transferred responding to a novel exemplar in the same but not a different context 24 hours later. Experiment 2 revealed that infants' reactivated memory of category training remained intact and context-specific after 3 weeks. In Experiment 3, a novel category exemplar was able to reactivate the forgotten memory of category training only in the encoding context. At 6 months, information about the place where categories are constructed is prerequisite for retrieval of a category concept from long-term memory. This requirement insures that early category concepts remain stable over relatively long periods.
In 3 experiments, 6-month-old infants learned to move a mobile by kicking and were tested 1 to 21 days later for retention of the newly acquired memory as a function of the training and testing contexts. In Experiment 1, decreasing the relative distinctiveness of the training and testing context did not impair retrieval of the newly acquired memory. In Experiment 2, however, testing in a different context completely eliminated retention after delays of 1 and 3 days, when retention was otherwise perfect; after progressively longer delays, retention improved paradoxically. The familiarity or novelty of the test context was not a factor in the failure of infants to recognize the mobile in the altered context after 1 day. In Experiment 3, the effect of an altered context was assessed in a reactivation paradigm. After the training memory was forgotten, infants were presented with the original mobile as a reminder and were tested for retention of the training memory 1 day later. When either the reminding context or the testing context was different, they exhibited no retention. These findings reveal that memory retrieval at 6 months is highly specific to the setting in which the memory is acquired. We propose that infants learn what specific events are associated with what specific places prior to the age when they can locomote independently and acquire a spatiotemporal map of the relations between those places.
The ability of 2-month-old infants to discriminate changes in a 5-object crib mobile following a retention interval of 24 hr was assessed using the mobile conjugate reinforcement paradigm. Infants were trained in 3 daily 15-min sessions to produce mobile movement by footkicking. Twenty-four hr later, independent groups received generalization tests with mobiles containing 1–5 novel objects substituted into their original training mobile. A control group was tested with the original training mobile. These findings were compared with findings of 2 previous studies involving identical procedures with 3-month-olds, reanalyzed for measures of individual performance over successive test minutes. Although, in absolute terms, 2-month-olds had a flat generalization gradient relative to 3-month-olds, when each infant's kick rate during the generalization test was expressed relative to that infant's kick rate before, and at the end of, training, it was found that the generalization gradients of 2- and 3-month-olds were indistinguishable. The relative response measures indicated a surprising degree of specificity by both age groups: Test mobiles containing more than 1 novel object did not cue retrieval, but test mobiles containing no more than 1 new object yielded perfect retention and complete generalization. These data indicate that infants as young as 2 months are capable of encoding and maintaining a representation of the specific details of their training context for at least 24 hr and, after that delay, can perform fine discriminations based on the discrepancy between their test context and that representation.
The aim of these experiments was to explore the effect of contextual information on memory retrieval during early infancy. Eighty-two 3-month-old infants were trained for 2 consecutive days to kick their feet to produce movement in an overhead mobile. A distinctive training context was created by draping the sides and ends of a crib with a brightly colored cloth liner. Two to 4 weeks after the conclusion of training, independent groups of infants received a brief reminder treatment with the training mobile in the training context or with the training context alone. All infants were tested 24 hours later with their training mobile in their training context. Control infants received identical training and testing but no exposure to a reminder prior to the long- term retention test. The results demonstrated that reminding with the context alone was as effective as reminding with the mobile and the context presented together in alleviating forgetting for as long as 4 weeks after the completion of training. Furthermore, infants tested with a novel mobile following the context-only reminder discriminated a change in the mobile during the long-term retention test. These data underscore the importance of environmental context in learning and memory during early infancy, and the results have important implications for theories of memory development and infantile amnesia.
Three-month old infants learned to kick to produce movement in an overhead crib mobile on a conjugate reinforcement (FRI) schedule. All infants were trained in the presence of one of two distinctive crib bumpers. In Experiment 1, infants receiving cued-recall tests in the presence of the original training bumper remembered the conditioned association 1 week later, but those tested in the presence of a different bumper did not. Two weeks later, neither training group evidenced retention of the contingency. In Experiment 2, infants who received a 3-min exposure (“a reactivation treatment”) to the original training bumper 24 h prior to the 2-week retention test exhibited excellent long-term retention, whereas those exposed to a different bumper as a reminder did not, irrepective of whether it was identical to the test bumper or not. These findings demonstrate that the context alone, even though it was never exclusively paired with reinforcement, can act as a retrieval cue.
In this study, we compared 18-month-old infants' ability to imitate enabling and arbitrary sequences that were matched across stimuli, actions, and goals. In addition, we compared imitation by infants with and without prior practice of the target actions. Imitation following a 1-week delay was facilitated by an enabling structure but was not enhanced by prior practice.
The influence of changes in context and object characteristics on deferred imitation was assessed in 14-month-old infants. In Experiment 1, infants in the imitation group saw an adult demonstrate target acts on miniature objects in an unusual context (an orange polka-dot tent). When later presented with larger objects in a normal laboratory room, these infants performed significantly more target acts than did controls. In Experiment 2, three groups of infants were tested. Infants in an imitation(no change) group saw an adult demonstrate target acts and were subsequently tested in the same room using the same objects as the adult. Infants in the imitation (context + object size & color change) group followed the same procedure, but both the context and two salient featural characteristics of the objects (size and color) were changed between encoding and the recall test of deferred imitation. Control infants did not see the target demonstrations. Results showed that the combined changes in context and object features led to a significant decrease in imititive performance. Nonetheless, in comparison to the controls, infants exhibited significant recall as indexed by deferred imitation. The results show that imitation generalizes across changes in object size, object color, and test context. The implications for theories of memory and representational development are discussed.
In a free recall experiment, divers learnt lists of words in two natural environments: on dry land and underwater, and recalled the words in either the environment of original learning, or in the alternative environment. Lists learnt underwater were best recalled underwater, and vice versa. A subsequent experiment shows that the disruption of moving from one environment to the other was unlikely to be responsible for context-dependent memory.
The ability of 6-month-old infants to remember a functional category acquired in a specific context was assessed in 3 experiments via an operant procedure in which infants learned to perform a specific action (a footkick) to activate an object suspended before them. In Experiment 1, infants trained with different exemplars in the same context transferred responding to a novel exemplar in the same but not a different context 24 hours later. Experiment 2 revealed that infants' reactivated memory of category training remained intact and context-specific after 3 weeks. In Experiment 3, a novel category exemplar was able to reactivate the forgotten memory of category training only in the encoding context. At 6 months, information about the place where categories are constructed is prerequisite for retrieval of a category concept from long-term memory. This requirement insures that early category concepts remain stable over relatively long periods.
In 2 experiments we asked whether training in multiple contexts could eliminate context-dependent memory retrieval at 6 months as it does for adults. We found that 24-hour retention was disrupted when infants were trained in one context and tested in another but not when they were trained in multiple contexts prior to testing in a novel context (Experiment 1). After a long delay, however, training in multiple contexts did not facilitate memory retrieval in a novel context: An otherwise effective retrieval cue (the training mobile) did not alleviate forgetting 3 weeks later when it was presented in a novel context (Experiment 2). These findings demonstrate that multiple learning contexts can override the debilitating effects of an altered context on memory retrieval at 6 months, but only over the short term. The resistance of older memories to retrieval in novel contexts after long periods of disuse may be adaptive, insuring that potentially inappropriate or irrelevant memories will not be expressed.