Memory for complex visual objects but not for allocentric locations during the first year of life

Abstract

International audienceAlthough human infants demonstrate early competence to retain visual information, memory capacities during infancy remain largelyundocumented. In three experiments, we used a Visual Paired Comparison (VPC) task to examine abilities to encode identity(Experiment 1) and spatial properties (Experiments 2a and 2b) of unfamiliar complex visual patterns during the first year of life. In the first experiment, 6- and 9-month-old infants were familiarized with visual arrays composed of four abstract patterns arranged in a square configuration. Recognition memory was evaluated by presenting infants with the familiarized array paired with a novel array composed of four new patterns. The second couple of experiments aimed to examine infant ability to encode the spatial relationships between each pattern of the array (e.g., where is A in the square configuration). The 6-, 9- and 12-month-old infants were tested on a spatial version of the VPC task, in which the novel array was composed of the same patterns than the familiarized array but arranged differently within the square configuration. Results indicated that infants retained the identity of the patterns but not their specific spatial relationships within the square configuration (i.e., allocentric location of the patterns), suggesting either an immaturity of the processes involved in object-to-location binding, or the inappropriateness of unfamiliar complex objects to reveal such early allocentric abilities

Impact of language familiarity on abstract pattern recognition in 9- to 12-month-old infants

“…Here, we hypothesize that ambient language familiarity context could influence memory encoding mechanisms during the learning process, not just the recuperation of the newly encoded information (Schroers et al, 2007). In line with this idea, infants exposed to silent familiarization conditions can learn and recognize as efficiently as the one learning with their native language (Dupierrix et al, 2015), not better or worse. It is thus reasonable to suggest that the context of a non-native language at familiarization could prevent the memorization of the object rather than its simple retrieval at test.…”

“…The visual stimuli were abstract patterns varying in shape, texture, and color and were previously used by Dupierrix et al (2015) (Figure 1).…”

“…It is now established that infants have some basic form of memory during their first year of life (Bauer et al, 2010), even if there is still a debate on how this form of memory relates to the one present in adults (Jabès & Nelson, 2015). For instance, Infants show long-term memory (days) for odor (Delaunay-El Allam et al, 2010), operant conditioning (Rovee-Collier, 1997), and pictures of faces or objects (Dupierrix et al, 2015; Fagan, 1972).…”

“…The goal of the present article is to test whether the type of auditory speech context (familiar-native or unfamiliar—non-native) influences learning and recognition memory of unknown visual patterns. To do so, we used the same abstract visual patterns as those used by Dupierrix et al (2015) which are easily recognized by 6- and 9-month-olds when presented in silence during familiarization in a VPC task.…”

Design Choices in the Infant Habituation Paradigm: A Pre-registered Crowd-Sourced Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

“…To this day, hundreds of habituation studies have been conducted in order to investigate the mental processes of infants. Streams of research such as language learning (e.g., Bijeljac-Babic et al, 2016;Byers-Heinlein et al, 2013;Fennell & Werker, 2003;Kajikawa et al, 2006), face perception (e.g., Anzures et al, 2009;Damon et al, 2016;Sakuta et al, 2014;Xiao et al, 2015), numerical cognition ( e.g., Brannon, 2002;Lipton & Spelke, 2003Xu et al, 2005), rule learning (e.g., Bulf et al, 2011Bulf et al, , 2015Frank et al, 2009;Kirkham et al, 2007), emotion processing (e.g., Addabbo et al, 2018;Brenna et al, 2013;Hock et al, 2017;Ichikawa et al, 2014), social development (e.g., Henderson et al, 2013;Henderson & Woodward, 2011;Kelly et al, 2007), intelligence (e.g., Kavšek, 2004;McCall & Carriger, 1993;Slater, 1997), memory (e.g., Dupierrix et al, 2015;Jones et al, 2011;Oakes & Kovack-Lesh, 2013;Zosh et al, 2011), among others, were able to make considerable progress in understanding sociocognitive development using the habituation paradigm. Yet, best practices in designing habituation studies are not firmly established and in concordance with methodological and technological developments in infant research, nor is our understanding of habituation as a cognitive process in infancy (Colombo & Mitchell, 2009;Kucharský et al, submitted;Sirois & Mareschal, 2002).…”