Perceptual identification of contextual attributes and infant memory retrieval.

Abstract

The contribution of specific contextual attributes to recognition of a well-learned cue was examined in four experiments with 6-month-olds. 24 h after learning to move a given mobile in a distinctive visual surround by kicking, recognition of the training cue was tested in either the original context or in one in which only a single contextual attribute was altered. Retrieval was completely disrupted by all form changes involving the deletion of angles and by a chromatic figure/ground reversal, but a discriminable change in form color had no effect. Although infants displayed partial retention in a degraded context after 1 day, they displayed no retention when a reminder was administered in the same degraded context after 20 days. These data reveal that infants do not encode contextual information holistically; moreover, they imply a privileged status for highly specific information about the incidental setting in which an event occurs. Unless this same highly specific information is perceptually identified at the time of testing, the memory of that event will not be retrieved. These data are consistent with our hypothesis that the visual context serves as an initial attention gate for memory retrieval.A common finding in studies of animals, children, and adults is that retention is better the greater the similarity between the encoding and retrieval contexts (

Developmental changes in the contextual control of recognition

“…Our conclusion that, by 6 months of age, infants process information in the context automatically and in parallel is consistent with our previous finding that contextual changes involving the deletion of an angle also do not disrupt delayed recognition at 6 months (Rovee-Collier, Schechter, et al, 1992). In that study, contextual changes from squares to either circles or stripes disrupted 24-hr retention, but changes from squares to triangles did not-despite the fact that infants could discriminate the change.…”

“…Six-month-olds discriminate all spatial arrangements of horizontal and vertical line segments after 24 hr when the stimuli are displayed on the focal cue (Bhatt, RoveeCollier, & Weiner, 1994), and their retention is significantly impaired by a context change 24 hr after training (Boller & Rovee-Collier, 1992;Rovee-Collier, Schechter, Shyi, & Shields, 1992;. Given the results of Experiment 1, we predicted that 6-month-olds would exhibit a retention deficit if trained in a context displaying these same stimulus configurations and tested in the presence of a different configuration.…”

Infant learning and long-term memory at 6 months: A confirming analysis

“…Not until the hippocampus presumably attained funcminutes at most-for the better part of the first year of life (for review, see Werner & Perlmutter, tional maturity, late in the first year, was the capacity to form relatively enduring memories thought possible (Kagan & Hamburg, 1981;Schacter & Moscovitch, 1984). Using an operant learning par-however, our laboratory has documented longto 12-month-olds, using portable but larger computer-driven trains in highly complex displays term retention on a different order of magnitude, ranging from 2 days at 2 months of age (Vander (Klein, Gilch, Bhatt, Hartshorn, & Rovee-Collier, 1994;Klein et al, 1993). However, the duration Linde, Morrongiello, & Rovee-Collier, 1985) to 2 weeks at 6 months of age (Hill, Borovsky, & of retention of these older infants was considerably longer than we had anticipated on the basis of .…”

“…In addition, we wondered if memory reactivation could be demonstrated in the train task and, after earlier work of Butler (1954) and Fagen and Ohr (1986), for use with 9-to 12-month-olds if so, whether some of the major variables that affect reactivation and the subsequent expression (Klein, Wondoloski, Carvalho, Wurtzel, & Bhatt, 1993). Butler had taught monkeys to open a winof the reactivated memory in the mobile task (e.g., the specificity of the training cue and training condow by lever pressing in order to view a train moving around a track on a table-top in an adjatext as retrieval cues) would similarly affect them in the train task.…”

Can Intersensory Redundancy and Social Contingency Enhance Memory in Bobwhite Quail Hatchlings?

“…The study of early memory development has come a long way from its initial concerns with whether and how early infants learn, to its current focus on how long infants can remember what they learned and under what conditions (Rovee-Collier, 1996). Researchers have found that infant memory is influenced by several factors, including amount and distribution of training (Ohr, Fagen, Rovee-Collier, Hayne, & Linde, 1989), the match between the focal object of learning and contextual cues present at acquisition and recall (Rovee-Collier, Schechter, Shyi, & Shields, 1992), the amount of information in terms of number of components in a sequence (Bauer, 1995), postevent information (if novel or familiar) along with its location (whether central or peripheral to the target) and timing (Boller, Grabelle, & Rovee-Collier, 1995), the organization of information to be retained (i.e., when ordered causally or arbitrarily, see Bauer, 1997), and reminder techniques such as reactivation and reinstatement (Rovee-Collier, 1995), to name a few. While these findings from memory research have informed us about a number of mechanisms involved in learning and memory retrieval during early development, less attention has been paid to understanding infant memory by manipulating the perceptual experience of young organisms.…”