Memory load affects object individuation in 18-month-old infants

Zosh, Jennifer M.; Feigenson, Lisa

doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2012.07.005

Cited by 40 publications

(52 citation statements)

References 56 publications

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“…Meanwhile, studies like those reported here measure observers’ ability to remember that a given number of objects existed in a particular location, regardless of their features. Previous research shows that infants sometimes remember that an object was present, even when its features are forgotten (Kibbe & Feigenson, submitted; Kibbe & Leslie, 2011; Zosh & Feigenson, 2012), raising the possibility that heterogeneity may differently affect infants’ memory for objects’ existence and for their features. In addition, the influence of array heterogeneity at different retention intervals remains to be explored.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…But they showed little evidence of remembering the objects’ identities. For example, when a toy cat, shoe, and bus had been hidden but infants retrieved a car, duck, and brush (i.e., when all of the original objects changed their identities), infants failed to keep searching for the originally hidden objects (despite successfully using these identity changes to guide further searching when arrays of just one or two objects had originally been hidden; Zosh & Feigenson, 2012). In that study, infants presented with three-object arrays only succeeded at using object features to individuate when an object changed radically (from a solid plastic toy to a squishy, non-object blob).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Array heterogeneity prevents catastrophic forgetting in infants

Zosh

Feigenson

2015

Cognition

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Working memory is limited in adults and infants. But unlike adults, infants whose working memory capacity is exceeded often fail in a particularly striking way: they do not represent any of the presented objects, rather than simply remembering as many objects as they can and ignoring anything further (Feigenson & Carey 2003, 2005). Here we explored the nature of this “catastrophic forgetting,” asking whether stimuli themselves modulate the way in which infants’ memory fails. We showed 13-month old infants object arrays that either were within or that exceeded working memory capacity—but, unlike previous experiments, presented objects with contrasting features. Although previous studies have repeatedly documented infants’ failure to represent four identical hidden objects, in Experiments 1 and 2 we found that infants who saw four contrasting objects hidden, and then retrieved just two of the four, successfully continued searching for the missing objects. Perceptual contrast between objects sufficed to drive this success; infants succeeded regardless of whether the different objects were contrastively labeled, and regardless of whether the objects were semantically familiar or completely novel. In Experiment 3 we explored the nature of this surprising success, asking whether array heterogeneity actually expanded infants’ working memory capacity or rather prevented catastrophic forgetting. We found that infants successfully continued searching after seeing four contrasting objects hidden and retrieving two of them, but not after retrieving three of them. This suggests that, like adults, infants were able to remember up to, but not beyond, the limits of their working memory capacity when representing heterogeneous arrays.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Array heterogeneity prevents catastrophic forgetting in infants

Zosh

Feigenson

2015

Cognition

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“…Zosh and Feigenson (2012) arranged a switch so that 3 items hidden in the box (e.g., a cat, a shoe, and a bus) were not the same ones that were there to be retrieved from the box (e.g., a car, a duck, and a brush), yet these changes did not increase the time 18-month-olds spent looking in the box. The switches did make a difference when only 1 or 2 items were hidden in the box, so it appears that the feature information was lost (or at least, not usable in the same way) when too many items were added to working memory.…”

Section: Development Of Working Memory Capacity In Infancymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…When the objects retrieved do not match the ones hidden it is possible that the infants even realize that something has changed, but are not committed to the specific features of the objects hidden when working memory is overwhelmed because their attention has shifted to using the limited available working memory to keep track of the number of items retrieved, with not enough capacity left to keep track of which objects have been retrieved. Some such account would help to explain why Zosh and Feigenson (2012) found that 18-month-old infants appeared to care about the switch given 1 or 2 hidden items but were unconcerned about the switch given 3 hidden items.…”

Section: Development Of Working Memory Capacity In Infancymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In infancy, 18-month-olds acted as if they cared about the particulars of objects in working memory when 1 or 2 items were hidden and had to be stored in working memory, but were not concerned about particulars any more when 3 objects were hidden and had to be stored in working memory (Zosh & Feigenson, 2012). …”

Section: Reconciliation Of the Infant And Child Literaturesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Mental Objects in Working Memory

Cowan

2017

Advances in Child Development and Behavior

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Working memory is the small amount of information that we hold in mind and use to carry out cognitive processes such as language comprehension and production, problem-solving, and decision-making. In order to understand cognitive development, it would be helpful to know whether working memory increases in capacity with development and, if so, how and why. I will focus on two major stumbling blocks toward understanding working memory development, namely that (1) many potentially relevant aspects of the mind change in parallel during development, obscuring the role of any one change; and (2) one cannot use the same test procedure from infancy to adulthood, complicating comparisons across age groups. With regard to the first stumbling block, the parallel development of different aspects of the mind, we discuss research in which attempts were made to hold constant some factors (knowledge, strategies, direction of attention) to investigate whether developmental differences remain. With regard to the second stumbling block, procedural differences in tests at different age groups, I suggest ways in which the results might be reconciled across procedures. I highlight the value of pursuing research that could distinguish between two different key hypotheses that emerge: that there is a developmental increase in the number of working memory slots (or in a basic resource that holds items in working memory), and that there is a developmental increase in the amount of detail that each of these slots can hold.

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The impact of memory load and perceptual cues on puzzle learning by 24‐month olds

Barr

Moser²,

Rusnak

et al. 2016

Developmental Psychobiology

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Early childhood is characterized by memory capacity limitations and rapid perceptual and motor development [Rovee-Collier (1996). Infant Behavior & Development, 19, 385-400]. The present study examined 2-year olds' reproduction of a sliding action to complete an abstract fish puzzle under different levels of memory load and perceptual feature support. Experimental groups were compared to baseline controls to assess spontaneous rates of production of the target actions; baseline production was low across all experiments. Memory load was manipulated in Exp. 1 by adding pieces to the puzzle, increasing sequence length from 2 to 3 items, and to 3 items plus a distractor. Although memory load did not influence how toddlers learned to manipulate the puzzle pieces, it did influence toddlers' achievement of the goal-constructing the fish. Overall, girls were better at constructing the puzzle than boys. In Exp. 2, the perceptual features of the puzzle were altered by changing shape boundaries to create a two-piece horizontally cut puzzle (displaying bilateral symmetry), and by adding a semantically supportive context to the vertically cut puzzle (iconic). Toddlers were able to achieve the goal of building the fish equally well across the 2-item puzzle types (bilateral symmetry, vertical, iconic), but how they learned to manipulate the puzzle pieces varied as a function of the perceptual features. Here, as in Exp. 1, girls showed a different pattern of performance from the boys. This study demonstrates that changes in memory capacity and perceptual processing influence both goal-directed imitation learning and motoric performance.

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Memory load affects object individuation in 18-month-old infants

Cited by 40 publications

References 56 publications

Array heterogeneity prevents catastrophic forgetting in infants

Array heterogeneity prevents catastrophic forgetting in infants

Mental Objects in Working Memory

The impact of memory load and perceptual cues on puzzle learning by 24‐month olds

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