The effect of crying on long-term memory in infancy

The influence of crying on infants' long-term memory for a learned response was investigated in 3 experiments. In each, infants were trained to move a crib mobile containing 10 identical objects by means of kicking and were then exposed to a reinforcer containing only 2 of these components. This shift in component numerosity produced crying in 53% of the infants. Infants who cried in response to the reward shift evidenced no retention of the contingency 1 week later (Experiment 1) but did have excellent retention at 1 day (Experiment 2). In Experiment 3, a brief reactivation treatment alleviated forgetting at 3 weeks regardless of the presence of crying in response to the change in mobiles. An unexpected recency effect characterized the efficacy of the reactivation treatment. The results indicate that crying in response to the violation of a reward-expectation habit functions as an amnesic agent to produce accelerated forgetting.     

Contextual Variation and Memory Retrieval at Six Months

In 2 experiments we asked whether training in multiple contexts could eliminate context-dependent memory retrieval at 6 months as it does for adults. We found that 24-hour retention was disrupted when infants were trained in one context and tested in another but not when they were trained in multiple contexts prior to testing in a novel context (Experiment 1). After a long delay, however, training in multiple contexts did not facilitate memory retrieval in a novel context: An otherwise effective retrieval cue (the training mobile) did not alleviate forgetting 3 weeks later when it was presented in a novel context (Experiment 2). These findings demonstrate that multiple learning contexts can override the debilitating effects of an altered context on memory retrieval at 6 months, but only over the short term. The resistance of older memories to retrieval in novel contexts after long periods of disuse may be adaptive, insuring that potentially inappropriate or irrelevant memories will not be expressed.     

Attention and memory for faces and actions in infancy: the salience of actions over faces in dynamic events

Discrimination and memory for video films of women performing different activities was investigated in 5.5 month-old infants. In Experiment 1, infants (N = 24) were familiarized to the faces of one of three women performing one of three repetitive activities (blowing bubbles, brushing hair, and brushing teeth). Overall, results indicated discrimination and memory for the actions but not the faces after both a 1-min and a 7-week delay. Memory was demonstrated by a visual preference for the novel actions after the 1-min delay and for the familiar actions after the 7-week delay, replicating prior findings that preferences shift as a function of retention time. Experiment 2 (N = 12) demonstrated discrimination and memory for the faces when infants were presented in static poses at the 1-min delay, but not the 7-week delay. In Experiment 3 (N = 18), discrimination of the actions was replicated, but no discrimination among the objects embedded in the actions (hairbrush, bubble wand, toothbrush) was found. These findings demonstrate the attentional salience of actions over faces in dynamic events to 5.5 month-olds. They highlight the disparity between results generated from moving versus static displays in infancy research and emphasize the importance of using dynamic events as a basis for generalizing about perception and memory for events in the real world.     

Get ‘Real’: Does Practicing Speeches Before an Audience Improve Performance?

Public speaking texts and instructors typically encourage students to practice speeches as a means of managing anxiety and enhancing performance. The effectiveness of various speech practice methods has received little attention. Participants completed the PRCA-24 and PRPSA-34, and indicated the number of times they used a variety of practice methods to prepare for a speech. Upon completing this questionnaire, participants delivered a videotaped speech. Students who practiced their speech before an audience received higher evaluation scores than did students who practiced without an audience. In addition, students who practiced their speech before larger audiences received higher evaluation scores than students who practiced before smaller audiences.     

Measurement of College Level Reading Competence in A Content Area

Abstract

The effects of overt verbalization anti practice on problem solving ability were examined. The 100 secondary school students who served as Ss were divided into four groups: (1) those who received practice word problems and solved problems while thinking aloud, (2) those who did not practice but solved problems while thinking aloud, (3) those who practiced but did not verbalize, and (4) those who received no practice and did not verbalize. Analysis of variance revealed that neither overt verbalization nor practice significantly influenced problem solving scores. However, Ss who were required to think aloud made significantly more computational errors than those who worked without verbalizing.     

Infants' use of shared linguistic information to clarify ambiguous requests

Do infants use past linguistic information to interpret an ambiguous request for an object? When infants in this research were shown 2 objects, and asked for 1 with an indefinite request (e.g., "Can you get it for me?"), both 15- and 18-month-olds used the speaker's previous reference to an absent object to interpret the request. The 18-month-olds did so even when the request was made after a 2.5-min delay. When the request was made by a person who did not participate in the conversation, the infants did not use the previous verbal information. These results demonstrate infants' ability to use language as a source of information in ambiguous contexts and indicate an early appreciation of the shared nature of conversation.     

Effects of explicit rules in learning to spell open- and closed-syllable words

Second graders (N = 222; 7.7 years of age) practiced with open- and closed-syllable words in a computer-assisted training program and appropriate spelling rules were either explicitly provided during practice or not. Also, children practiced either with a small set of exemplars or with a large set; the latter condition was expected to promote the use of rules. A control group consisting of 209 second graders, who did not practice in the computer-assisted training program, was also included in the study. Learning effects of practice were established by testing the spelling of practiced words, as well as novel transfer words, in pre-, post-, and retention tests. The results in the posttest showed that with a large set of exemplars during practice explicitly provided spelling rules are supportive for learning to spell novel words but no further effects of explicit rules were found, either for practiced words or in the retention test.     

Emotional eavesdropping: infants selectively respond to indirect emotional signals

Two experiments examined whether 18-month-olds learn from emotions directed to a third party. Infants watched an adult perform actions on objects, and an Emoter expressed Anger or Neutral affect toward the adult in response to her actions. The Emoter then became neutral and infants were given access to the objects. Infants' actions were influenced by their memory of the Emoter's affect. Moreover, infants' actions varied as a function of whether they were currently in the Emoter's visual field. If the previously angry Emoter was absent (Experiment 1) or turned her back (Experiment 2), infants did not use the prior emotion to regulate their behavior. Infants learn from emotional eavesdropping, and their subsequent behavior depends on the Emoter's orientation toward them.     

The Relation between Attachment and Knowledge of Self and Mother in One-to Three-Year-Old Infants

The relation between attachment to mother and knowledge of self and mother in 2 domains was assessed in 1- to 3-year-old infants. Infants' featural knowledge was measured by featural recognition, name, possession, and gender. In this domain, no difference between the 2 attachment classifications was obtained at 1 year of age, but significant and increasingly large differences between securely and insecurely attached infants were found at 2 and 3 years of age. The second domain measured infants' actions on self and mother in the context of symbolic play. Regardless of age, infants who were securely attached to mother acted on self and mother with greater complexity than did infants who were insecurely attached. Attachment was related equally to the complexity of infants' knowledge of self and mother. These data were discussed in the context of the development of infants' internal working models of attachment and the onset of representational ability.     

It clicks when it is rolled and it squeaks when it is squeezed: what 10-month-old infants learn about object function

Function has been considered important in numerous literatures in the study of cognitive development, yet little is known about what and how infants learn about function. Five experiments examined what 10-month-old infants (N=80) learn about functions that involve a sound produced when an object is acted on. Infants habituated to a single object (Experiment 1) or multiple objects that performed the same function (Experiment 2) learned both the actions and the sounds. Infants did not appear to learn relations between actions and sounds (Experiment 3) or appearances and sounds (Experiment 4), although they did learn the relations between appearances and actions (Experiment 5). These results are discussed in terms of how infants learn about object function.     

Developmental Changes in Imitation from Television during Infancy

Infants' (N = 276) ability to learn from television under seminaturalistic conditions was examined in five experiments with 12-, 15-, and 18-month-olds. In all experiments, an adult performed a series of specific actions with novel stimuli. Some infants watched the demonstration live, and some infants watched the same demonstration on television from prerecorded videotape. Infants' ability to reproduce the target actions was then assessed either immediately or after a 24-hour delay. Infants of all ages exhibited imitation when the actions were modeled live. There were age-related and task-related differences, however, in infants' ability to imitate the same actions modeled on television. The role of perceptual, attentional, and cognitive development in the ability to learn from television is discussed.     

Modeling referential actions in 6- to 18-month-old infants: a precursor to symbolic understanding

Social precursors to symbolic understanding of pictures were examined with 100 infants ages 6, 9, 12, 15, and 18 months. Adults demonstrated 1 of 2 stances toward pictures and objects (contemplative or manipulative), and then gave items to infants for exploration. For pictures, older infants (12, 15, and 18 months) emulated the adult's actions following both types of demonstration trials. For objects, infants did not emulate actions following either stance at any age. The findings suggest that infants enlist their imitative learning skills in the context of learning the conventions of action on pictorial symbols. The data are interpreted as pointing to the importance of social learning in developing an understanding of the referential function of pictorial symbols.     

The Organization of Reactivated Memory in Infancy

The specificity of memory retrieval by 3-month-old infants was examined in 3 experiments. All infants were trained in the mobile conjugate reinforcement paradigm to kick their feet to produce movement in an overhead crib mobile and were tested 2 weeks later. 24 hours prior to the test, subjects received a 3-min reminder treatment. The results of Experiment 1 demonstrated that only the moving training mobile alleviated forgetting after the 2-week retention interval; forgetting was not alleviated by exposure to the stationary training mobile or to the mobile stands and ribbon alone. The results of Experiments 2 and 3 demonstrated that, once retrieved, the reactivated memory was highly specific to the conditions of original training. Furthermore, the memory attributes that were the last to be forgotten (e.g., the general or global features) were the first to be retrieved following the reminder treatment. Conversely, those memory attributes that were forgotten first (e.g., the specific or local details) were the last to be retrieved. These findings have important implications for infant memory retrieval, reminiscence, and infantile amnesia.     

Role of proactive interference in infantile forgetting

Ontogenetic changes in the role of proactive interference in augmenting forgetting were tested with 444 rats as subjects. In Experiment 1, Phase 1 (the source of proactive interference) included events that were contingent or not contingent on responding in the context of either the Phase 2 training apparatus or a distinctly different apparatus. After learning a spatial discrimination for Phase 2, retention tests were given after intervals of 2 min, 1 day, 7 days, 30 days, or 65 days. The results indicated: (1) infantile amnesia, and (2) proactive interference for infant rats but not for adults, in spite of substantial simple forgetting among adults. Experiment 2 extended the test to a go/no-go avoidance task. The results of Experiment 2 gave some indication that infants were more susceptible than were adults to proactive interference over short intervals, but the generality of this relationship was sufficiently ambiguous as to suggest different mechanisms of interference for the discrimination and go/no-go tasks. These data indicate multiple mechanisms of infantile forgetting that may vary with certain characteristics of the task.     

Can 5-month-old infants consider the perspective of a novel eyeless agent? New evidence for early mentalistic reasoning

Is early reasoning about an agent's knowledge best characterized by a mentalistic stance, a teleological stance, or both? In this research, 5-month-old infants (N = 64, 50% female, 83% White) saw a novel eyeless agent consistently approach object-A as opposed to object-B. Although infants could always see both objects, a screen separated object-B from the agent. When object-B protruded above the screen, infants interpreted the agent's actions as revealing a preference for object-A over object-B. When object-B did not protrude above the screen, however, infants refrained from attributing such a preference: Consistent with mentalistic accounts, they reasoned that the agent's representation of the scene did not include object-B, and they used the agent's incomplete representation, non-egocentrically, to interpret its actions.     

A conditioning analysis of infant long-term memory.

The long-term retention of conditioned operant footkicks by 3-month-old infants was assessed in 2 studies. In both, infants were trained in a conjugate reinforcement paradigm in which footkicks produced conjugate activation of the components of an overhead crib mobile. After 2 training sessions, retention (cued recall, savings) was assessed cross-sectionally in a third session scheduled after varying intervals. In experiment 1, 32 infants were tested after intervals of 48, 72, 96, or 120 hours; in experiment 2, 24 infants were tested after 96, 144, 192, or 336 hours. No evidence of forgetting was observed for as long as 192 hours following original training. Although both retention measures indicated a significant memory deficit in the group tested after 336 hours (2 weeks), some individuals continued to exhibit substantial recall and savings after this retention interval. A conditioning analysis was viewed as a logical means by which to bridge the gap between animal and adult human models of memory.     

Contextual factors affect absent reference comprehension in 14-month-olds

How do infants come to understand references to absent objects? 14-month-old infants first learned a name for a novel toy, which was then placed out of view. The infants who listened to a story mentioning the nonvisible object, looked, pointed, and searched for it more often than did infants who heard a story using a different name. Their behavior was affected by minor changes in context; they responded to the name of the out-of-view toy less often when it was not easily accessible or after a delay. These findings indicate that the development of absence reference comprehension depends on the interaction of representational and contextual factors.     

The role of person familiarity in young infants' perception of emotional expressions

This research investigated the role of person familiarity in the ability of 3.5-month-old infants to recognize emotional expressions. Infants (N = 72) were presented simultaneously with two filmed facial expressions, happy and sad, accompanied by a single vocal expression that was concordant with one of the two facial expressions. Infants' looking preferences and facial expressions were coded. Results indicated that when the emotional expressions were portrayed by each infant's own mother, infants looked significantly longer toward the facial expressions that were accompanied by affectively matching vocal expressions. Infants who were presented with emotional expressions of an unfamiliar woman did not. Even when a brief delay was inserted between the presentation of facial and vocal expressions, infants who were presented with emotional expressions of their own mothers looked longer at the facial expression that was sound specified, indicating that some factor other than temporal synchrony guided their looking preferences. When infants viewed the films of their own mothers, they were more interactive and expressed more positive and less negative affect. Moreover, infants produced a greater number of full and bright smiles when the sound-specified emotion was "happy," and particularly when they viewed the happy expressions of their own mothers. The average duration of negative affect was significantly longer for infants who observed the unfamiliar woman than for those who observed their own mothers. These results show that when more contextual information-that is, person familiarity-was available, infants as young as 3.5 months of age recognized happy and sad expressions. These findings suggest that in the early stages of development, infants are sensitive to contextual information that potentially facilitates some of the meaning of others' emotional expressions.     

The A-Not-B Error: Results from a Logistic Meta-Analysis

A meta-analysis of the A-not-B error was conducted using logistic regression on studies conducted before September 1997 (107 data points). An earlier meta-analysis by Wellman, Cross, and Bartsch revealed that age, delay between hiding and retrieval, and number of hiding locations were significant predictors of both the proportion of infants who searched correctly on B trials and the proportion of infants who searched perseveratively. The current analysis replicated these findings with two exceptions: (1) The number of trials at the A location was a significant predictor, and (2) the number of locations was a significant predictor of the proportion of infants who searched perseveratively, but not the proportion of infants who searched correctly. Implications of these findings are discussed and a quantitative version of a hierarchical competing-systems model of infant search is proposed.     

Young Children's Long-Term Retention of a Pediatric Examination

Children at ages 3, 5, and 7 ( N = 187) provided reports of their physical examinations immediately following the checkup and after a delay of either 1, 3, or 6 weeks, or only after 3 weeks. The protocol used for all interviews consisted of initial general prompts, followed by increasingly specific questions as needed. Recall of standard features of the examinations was scored, along with responses to questions concerning acts that did not occur. Retention of the event was extensive and accurate. Although clear age effects were observed in recall, the delay interval did not strongly affect performance over the 6-week period. The amount of forgetting was significant at ages 3 and 5, but not at age 7. With increasing age, a greater percentage of the features was spontaneously recalled. When presented with incongruous questions, all children evidenced rates of correct denials that exceeded chance and few errors of commission. The initial interview did not affect delayed recall. Implications for children's testimony are discussed.