Contextual control of memory retrieval in infancy: Evidence for associative priming

Abstract

The aim of these experiments was to explore the effect of contextual information on memory retrieval during early infancy. Eighty-two 3-month-old infants were trained for 2 consecutive days to kick their feet to produce movement in an overhead mobile. A distinctive training context was created by draping the sides and ends of a crib with a brightly colored cloth liner. Two to 4 weeks after the conclusion of training, independent groups of infants received a brief reminder treatment with the training mobile in the training context or with the training context alone. All infants were tested 24 hours later with their training mobile in their training context. Control infants received identical training and testing but no exposure to a reminder prior to the long- term retention test. The results demonstrated that reminding with the context alone was as effective as reminding with the mobile and the context presented together in alleviating forgetting for as long as 4 weeks after the completion of training. Furthermore, infants tested with a novel mobile following the context-only reminder discriminated a change in the mobile during the long-term retention test. These data underscore the importance of environmental context in learning and memory during early infancy, and the results have important implications for theories of memory development and infantile amnesia.