Reactivation of a visual discrimination in early infancy.

Abstract

Three-month-old infants learned to produce movement in two successively presented overhead crib mobiles by footkicking in a conjugate reinforcement paradigm. The mobiles differed in both color and pattern displays on the suspended components. Following acquisition, a discrimination was introduced whereby responding was reinforced in the presence of one mobile (S + ) but not in the presence of the other (S~). During a cued-recall retention test administered 21 days after the completion of discrimination training, infants evidenced no retention of either initial or discrimination training. Nevertheless, a brief reactivation treatment with S + 24 hours prior to the long-term retention test alleviated forgetting and restored the S + /S~ discrimination. Reactivation with S~ was no more effective than no reactivation treatment at all. These data confirm the efficacy of reminder procedures with very young infants and demonstrate the specificity with which the reminder alleviates forgetting.Whether young infants are capable of discrimination learning is no longer a relevant question to developmental psychologists. Since the pioneering work with newborns of Siqueland and Lipsitt (1966; see also Siqueland, 1970), investigators have repeatedly demonstrated that infants can learn to increase responding in the presence of one of two stimuli that is consistently paired with reward (

A dissociation between recognition and reactivation: The renewal effect at 3 months of age

“…We were surprised that introducing additional cues during reminding provided no benefit. Because a moving mobile was an effective reminder in the past when infants had acquired competing responses to the same cue (Fagen et al, ), we are confident that infants were effectively reminded and attribute their failure to exhibit context‐specific retention to competition between conflicting memories during the test. Presently, we propose that the reminder successfully reactivated the memories of acquisition and extinction, and these conflicting memories (kicking → mobile movement, kicking → no mobile movement) competed at the time of retrieval.…”

“…Consistent with this interpretation, work focused on 4‐ to 5‐month‐olds’ emotional reactivity during extinction has found increases in anger expressions and persistence in operant arm pulling during 2‐ or 3‐min extinction sessions (Crossman, Sullivan, Hitchcock, & Lewis, ; Sullivan & Lewis, ). Human infants also exhibit behavioral persistence in a variety of other situations, including object search tasks (Cuevas & Bell, ; Diamond et al, ), behavioral contrast paradigms (Fagen, ; Fagen et al, ), and inhibitory instrumental control tasks (Kalnins & Bruner, ), with the broader developmental literature indicating protracted development of emotional and behavioral regulation throughout infancy and early childhood (e.g., Rothbart, Sheese, Rueda, & Posner, ). Thus, the persistence in young human infants’ responding during the extinction manipulation likely reflects their general lack of ability to regulate their emotions and behaviors through inhibition.…”

“…We were surprised that introducing additional cues during reminding provided no benefit. Because a moving mobile was an effective reminder in the past when infants had acquired competing responses to the same cue (Fagen et al, 1981), we are confident that infants were effectively reminded and attribute their failure to exhibit context-specific…”

“…Although a reminder is an isolated component of the original training event, it recovers the memory of the entire event. Fagen, Yengo, Rovee-Collier, and Enright (1981) found that a moving mobile was an effective reminder for the forgotten discrimination memory of 3-month-olds who had originally learned that kicking to one mobile (S þ ) was reinforced, but kicking to a second mobile (S À ) was not. Because we had never attempted to retrieve a forgotten memory following an explicit extinction manipulation, we were unsure as to which particular reminder to use.…”

Specificity in the reactivation of infant memory

“…Recent findings with human infants have supported this view. Fagen, Yengo, Rovee-Collier, and Enright (1981) found that an S + (mobile components of a particular color-pattern combination) alleviated forgetting of the discrimination acquired three weeks earlier, whereas the S -(components of a different color and pattern) did not. Moreover, the effective reminder selectively enhanced responding to the S + but not to the S -.…”