Decreases in the response latency to priming over the first year of life

Minimum duration of reactivation at 3 months of age

“…Further, the magnitude of retention following reactivation peaked after 4 hr at 6 months of age, but it did not peak for 3 days at 3 months of age. Because the speed of reactivation was subsequently found to increase linearly with age (Hildreth & Rovee-Collier, 1999), it is tempting to attribute timing differences to maturational changes within the nervous system. Recently, however, Hayne, Gross, Hildreth, and Rovee-Collier (2000) reported that giving 3-montholds two reactivation treatments increased the speed of reactivation from 24 hr to 1 hr or less, thus eliminating a maturation-based account.…”

“…Their training memory also can be reactivated by exposure to the original training mobile (Rovee-Collier, Sullivan, Enright, Lucas, & Fagen, 1980). One week after forgetting, however, 3-month-olds require 24 hr to exhibit renewed retention after the reactivation treatment, whereas 6-month-olds exhibit renewed retention only 1 hr afterward (Boller, Rovee-Collier, Borovsky, O'Connor, & Shyi, 1990;Fagen & Rovee-Collier, 1983;Hildreth & Rovee-Collier, 1999). Because the younger infants take longer than 6-month-olds to renew responding after a reactivation treatment, they also may require a longer minimum exposure to it than the older infants.…”

Bidirectional priming in infants

“…In contrast, a priming procedure has been used extensively in past studies with 6-montholds to reactivate the memory of the operant train task, and its parameters are well established (Hartshorn & RoveeCollier, 1997;Hildreth & Rovee-Collier, 1999. For this reason, we began by asking whether the direct priming of the forgotten train memory would prime the associated puppet memory.…”

“…In contrast, forgetting and reactivation control groups exhibited no evidence of retention whatsoever. An identical result was obtained with 6-month-olds in the same task (Hill, Borovsky, & Rovee-Collier, 1988), with 6-to 18-month-olds in a task in which lever-pressing moved a miniature train around a circular track (Hartshorn & Rovee-Collier, 1997;Hildreth & Rovee-Collier, 1999Sweeney & Rovee-Collier, 2000), and with 14-to 18-month-olds engaged in multiple activities in a laboratory setting (Sheffield & Hudson, 1994).…”

Effects of priming duration on retention over the first 1½ years of life

“…Joh, Sweeney, and Rovee-Collier (2002) asked whether the minimum duration of priming in the mobile task also was 7.5 s at 3 months of age. Their study was motivated by evidence that 3-month-olds who received a full-length prime 1 week after forgetting the task exhibit renewed retention more slowly than 6-month-olds (Boller, Rovee-Collier, Borovsky, O'Connor, & Shyi, 1990;Fagen & Rovee-Collier, 1983;Hildreth & Rovee-Collier, 1999) and forget the reactivated memory more rapidly than 6-month-olds (Galluccio, 2001;Hayne & Rovee-Collier, 1995;Hill, Borovsky, & Rovee-Collier, 1988). Joh et al found that the minimum duration of an effective memory prime at 3 months was longer: Whereas a 7.5-s prime had alleviated forgetting 1 week after 6-month-olds had forgotten the task , a 2-min exposure was required to do so 1 week after 3-month-olds had forgotten it; however, a 7.5-s prime was sufficient to reactivate 3-month-olds' memory only 1 day after they had forgotten it, and a 3-min prime was required to reactivate it 2 weeks after they had forgotten it.…”