Levels‐of‐Processing Effects in Infant Memory?

Abstract

In 3 experiments, we manipulated 3-month-olds' attention to different components of a training display and assessed the effect on retention of those components. Attention was manipulated via a pop-out display (one target amidst 6 distractors) that enhances selective attention to the target relative to the distractors, and retention was assessed with displays composed entirely of targets or distractors. In Experiment 1, infants recognized both target and distractors after 1 day, confirming that both are initially encoded at some level. In Experiment 2, infants recognized a target L and distractor Ls after delays longer and shorter, respectively, than infants trained with Ls in a homogeneous display. Experiment 3 replicated the preceding pattern of results with a + stimulus. Thus, increasing or decreasing attention to an item during encoding produces a corresponding increase or decrease in its memorability. This finding is consistent with a levels of processing account and is inconsistent with accounts that deny a capacity for explicit memory to prelinguistic infants.

The development of face perception in infancy: Intersensory interference and unimodal visual facilitation.

“…Attentional salience hierarchies have the greatest effect on attention and perception when attentional resources are limited, tasks are difficult in relation to the skills of the perceiver, or memory load is high (Bahrick, 2010; Bahrick et al, 2010; Adler et al, 1998; Craik & Byrd, 1982; Craik et al, 2010). Our prior research demonstrates that even when older infants can detect amodal properties in both unimodal visual and synchronous audiovisual stimulation, intersensory facilitation can be reinstated if the task is made more difficult (Bahrick et al, 2010).…”

“…In fact, perception of faces is facilitated in dynamic as compared with static displays and provides invariant information for facial features across changes over time (Bahrick et al, 1996; Otsuka et al, 2009). The operation of salience hierarchies in attention allocation is especially evident when attentional resources are most limited (Bahrick, 2010; see also Adler, Gerhardstein, & Rovee-Collier, 1998), as is the case during infancy (see also Craik & Byrd, 1982; Craik, Luo, & Sakuta, 2010 for examples with adults and the elderly).…”

A dissociation in infants' memory for stimulus size: Evidence for the early development of multiple memory systems

“…For almost a decade and a half, however, researchers have generally assumed that infants possess only the capacity for implicit memory until late in the first postnatal year, when the system that supports explicit memory was thought to become functionally mature (Bachevalier & Mishkin, 1984;Kagan & Hamburg, 1981;Nadel, 1992Nadel, , 1994Nadel, Willner, & Kurz, 1985;Naito, 1990;Naito & Komatsu, 1993;Nelson, 1995;Parkin, 1989;Schacter & Moscovitch, 1984;Tulving & Schacter, 1990). Recently, however, operant studies using mobiles (Adler et al, 1998;Bhatt & Rovee-Collier, 1997;Gulya, Rovee-Collier, Galluccio, & Wilk, 1998;Hartshorn et al, 1998;Hildreth & Rovee-Collier, in press) and studies of deferred imitation (Barr, Dowden, & Hayne, 1996;Hayne & Campbell, 1997;Meltzoff & Moore, 1994) with infants aged 6 months and younger have found evidence that both memory systems are functional early in infancy (for review, see Rovee-Collier, 1997). The present finding that 3-month-olds, like adults, encode both size-sensitive and size-insensitive memory representations and exhibit a memory dissociation in response to a change in stimulus size on priming and recognition tasks adds to the growing evidence that the two memory systems develop in parallel rather than hierarchically during the first year of life.…”

“…This measure provides information about the degree of forgetting by groups that exhibited retention in the first place. It assumes that forgetting takes place gradually over the retention interval, such that the level of learned performance will progressively decline as the time between the end of training and testing increases -an assumption that we have repeatedly validated (Adler, Gerhardstein, & Rovee-Collier, 1998;Hayne, 1990;Sullivan, Rovee-Collier, & Tynes, 1979). A mean retention ratio significantly less than a theoretical population retention ratio of 1.00 indicates significant discrimination or forgetting, depending on whether the delay is short or long, respectively.…”

Tests of the Intersensory Redundancy Hypothesis across Early Postnatal Development

“…The concept of salience hierarchies (or saliency maps) has been used to explain what features of the environment are attended to and others ignored (Adler, Gerhardstein, & Rovee-Collier, 1998;Bahrick & Newell, 2008;Koch & Ullman, 1985). Specifically, when attentional resources are taxed, selective attention is thought to be first directed toward highly salient features and then progressively shift toward less salient features across exploratory time.…”