Programing

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Introduction

Behavioral data from human infants in operant conditioning and deferred imitation paradigms have indicated that the development of the ability to abstract and apply common information across situations, representational flexibility, is a major hallmark of memory development. For young infants, memory retrieval is contingent upon an exact match between the cues present at the time of encoding and the cues present at the time of retrieval (for reviews, see Barr & Hayne, 000; Rovee-Collier & Hayne, 187). For older infants, however, the range of effective retrieval cues gradually broadens, allowing past experiences to be retrieved by cues or contexts different from those present during original encoding (Hayne, Boniface, & Barr, 000; Hayne, McDonald, & Barr, 17; Herbert & Hayne, 000).

As infants begin to crawl, they are faced with the ongoing challenge of transferring information acquired in one context to similar problems encountered in another context. From this perspective, the onset of independent locomotion may mark a particularly important transition in memory development (Rovee-Collier, 16). Infants' ability to retrieve their memories in novel contexts may increase as they learn to crawl. The purpose of Experiment 1 was to examine age-related changes in deferred imitation during the first year of life. The purpose of Experiment was to examine the relation between the onset of independent locomotion and the flexibility of memory retrieval.

General Procedure

All infants were tested using a deferred imitation procedure. For infants in the demonstration condition, an experimenter performed a single target action with a novel object. The action was demonstrated six times in succession with either a cow or a duck stimulus. The infants' ability to reproduce the target action was assessed immediately or after a 4-hour delay. Infants in the control condition were not shown the target action prior to the test. The infant's behavior was video-recorded during the test. The presence or absence of the target behavior was scored for 0 seconds from the time the infant first touched the stimulus. Infants were given credit only for the first time that they produced the target action. Interobserver reliability was 100% (kappa = 1.00).

The target action for each stimulus

Stimulus Target Action Result

Cow

Press button

"Moos" times

Eyes light up

Duck

Press button

"Quacks" times

Eyes light up

Experiment 1 Immediate and Deferred Imitation with 6- and -Month Old Infants

Method

Independent groups of 6- and -month-old infants were tested with the original demonstration object either immediately or after a 4-hour delay. The production of target actions by infants in demonstration conditions was compared to the spontaneous production of the target actions by independent groups of infants in the control condition.

Results

Figure 1. Immediate and deferred imitation by 6- and -month-old infants in control and demonstration conditions.

• Infants in control groups rarely produced the target action irrespective of age.

• When tested immediately, both 6- and -month-old infants exhibited evidence of imitation.

• Six-month-old infants exhibited no retention when tested after a delay, however, 80% of -month-old infants exhibited retention of the target action when tested after a 4-hour delay.

Experiment Flexibility of memory in -month-old infants

Method

One hundred -month-old infants participated in the present experiment. At the time of their participation, half the infants were crawling and half were not. Crawling status was established by parental report and experimenter observation.

Independent groups of -month-old infants were tested after a 4-hour delay with either

1. The same stimulus in the same context (no change)

. A different stimulus in the same context (cue change)

. The same stimulus in a different context (context change)

4. A different stimulus in a different context (cue and context change)

For half of the infants, the demonstration occurred in the laboratory, and for the other half, the demonstration occurred in their home.

Results

Figure . Mean imitation scores of -month-old infants tested after a 4-hour delay.

• Baseline performance was equivalent for crawling and non-crawling infants.

• Crawling and non-crawling -month-olds imitated the target action when there was a change in the cue or in the context at the test.

• Only crawling -month-olds imitated the target action when there was a change in the cue and the context at the test.

Implications

The present findings provide convergent evidence that, at least by months of age, infants can exhibit deferred imitation (i.e, declarative memory) even when they are tested after a 4-hour delay. The results of Experiment also suggest that by -months of age, infants can retrieve and use their memories when they are tested with novel objects or in novel contexts.

In our previous research with deferred imitation, we have argued that in addition to maturation, prior experience can have a major impact on the duration and flexibility of memory retrieval (Hayne, Barr, & Herbert, 00; Herbert & Hayne, 000). Typically we have examined the impact of additional retrieval cues, such as physical practice or experimenter-provided verbal labels, on representational flexibility. In the present study, we demonstrated that experience bought by infants themselves to the learning situation also impacts on the way in which memories are encoded and retrieved. Rovee-Collier (16) has argued that the onset of independent location may influence the age at which infants begin to retrieve their memories in novel contexts. In support of this argument, the results of the present experiment indicate infants' ability to exploit novel retrieval cues is facilitated by prior crawling experience.

Human adults with temporal-lobe amnesia fail on traditional tests of deferred imitation (McDonough, Mandler, McKee, & Squire, 15). Successful deferred imitation by 6- to -month old infants therefore demonstrates that young infants have at least limited access to hippocampal memory systems. In response to recent research by Wirth et al. (00), Eichenbaum (00) has argued that while some neurons within the hippocampus acquire key information about new events, other hippocampal neurons appear to abstract common information across learning trials. This information is thought to reflect the core details to be learnt about a new event, and it is these details that will later be consolidated by the cerebellar cortex. The conclusion that hippocampally-mediated learning and memory is observed within the first 6 months of life is consistent with recent studies of human infant eyeblink conditioning (Herbert, Eckerman, & Stanton, 00). The present results, together with those of Wirth et al (00), suggest that the development of representational flexibility within the first year of life may be an important hallmark of hippocampal development.

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