Development of Memory Flashcards
What challenges are faced when studying memory in infants?
- Can’t talk
* No motor skills
What tasks are used to study infant memory?
- Visual recognition task
- Operant conditioning
- Deferred imitation
What is the vision recognition task?
• Paired comparison task or habituation task
• Track time infant was looking at stimulus
THE TEST
1. same face-same face
2. old face - new face
3. New face - old face
• If infant ignores old stimulus, then we can assume that they remembered the old stimulus and novelty preference occurred.
What is novelty preference?
Preference of new things.
Operant conditioning
- Infant baseline behavior
- Consequence (reward or punishment)
- Infant behavior
Mobile Conjugate Reinforcement
- Phase 1 – baseline kick rate; Ribbon does not move the mobile (non-reinforcement period); retention tested
- Phase 2 – Training & Learning; Ribbon tied to mobile, ribbon now moves the mobile.
- Phase 3– Testing;
- E.g: Train task – for older children, remembered for up to a year what to do to get the train running.
Deferred Imitation
- Infants required to produce a serious of modeled actions without prior practice, without delay.
- If there is imitation after delay then the infant did remember= memory!
Deferred Imitation demonstration of action sequence
- Remove mitten
- Shake mitten 3x to remove bell
- Replace mitten
What develops in memory?
- Older infants encode information FASTER – the time taken to learn a task decreases as function of age.
- Older infant remember information LONGER – Retention increases as a function of age
- Older infants EXPLOIT A WIDER RANGE OF RETRIEVAL CUES – Infants remember things only encoding & retrieval cues match; demonstrated in the mobile conjugate scenario when different sheets were used, infants did not recall what to do.
- Forgotten memories can be retrieved with reminders – Reinstatement; Training & Reminders necessary to recall (as seen in Campbell & Jaynes (1966) reinstatement & rats experiment)
Campbell & Jaynes (1966) – Reinstatement & Rats
- Train & reminded
- Training only
- Reminded only
TRAINING & REMINDERS NECCESARY TO RECALL!
What kind of reminders work?
- Encoding specificity/ Original training context
- Videos/photographs
- Repeated reminders
What happens when language develops?
- Childhood amnesia – Can’t speak about memories in early childhood b/c you did not speak when the memory was formed
- Magic shrinking machine results: Can’t describe how things were shrinking if at the time of encoding language was not present.
Suggestibility; Implicit & Explicit
- Influenced by: interviewers bias, emotional tone, stereotypes, repeated interviews
- Implicit/subtle suggestions: can unconsciously alter reports
- Explicit suggestions: Can consciously alter reports
What happens to suggestibility over time?
Suggestibility decreases by age, but there are still errors
What influences encoding?
- The nature of the experience
- Salience – Children take notice of what they find interesting & remembered what they payed attention to.
- E.g: Pirate Event: The children who EXPERIENCED (participated in) the event remembered more pieces of info. Children who OBSERVED & STUDIED it reported about the same amount of information
