Dissociation between features and feature relations in infant memory: effects of memory load. 1997

R S Bhatt, and C Rovee-Collier
Psychology Department, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40506-0044 USA. rbhatt@pop.uky.edu

Four experiments examined the effects of the number of features and feature relations on learning and long-term memory in infants. Three-month-olds learned to activate a mobile composed of either two or three kinds of blocks that differed in color, the figures displayed on them, and the figures' colors. Twenty-four hours later, infants trained with two objects discriminated feature recombinations but those trained with three objects did not. Even infants trained with three objects discriminated novel features, however, indicating that they remembered the individual features but not the relations among them. A subsequent experiment revealed that this dissociation between features and relations was induced by differential accessibility to memory rather than an encoding failure. We conclude that the size of the memory load selectively constrains infants' long-term memory for relational information. These results suggest that in infancy, as in adulthood, features and relations are psychologically distinct and that memory organization parallels the organization of perceptual processing.

UI MeSH Term Description Entries
D007223 Infant A child between 1 and 23 months of age. Infants
D008297 Male Males
D010364 Pattern Recognition, Visual Mental process to visually perceive a critical number of facts (the pattern), such as characters, shapes, displays, or designs. Recognition, Visual Pattern,Visual Pattern Recognition
D011597 Psychomotor Performance The coordination of a sensory or ideational (cognitive) process and a motor activity. Perceptual Motor Performance,Sensory Motor Performance,Visual Motor Coordination,Coordination, Visual Motor,Coordinations, Visual Motor,Motor Coordination, Visual,Motor Coordinations, Visual,Motor Performance, Perceptual,Motor Performance, Sensory,Motor Performances, Perceptual,Motor Performances, Sensory,Perceptual Motor Performances,Performance, Perceptual Motor,Performance, Psychomotor,Performance, Sensory Motor,Performances, Perceptual Motor,Performances, Psychomotor,Performances, Sensory Motor,Psychomotor Performances,Sensory Motor Performances,Visual Motor Coordinations
D011939 Mental Recall The process whereby a representation of past experience is elicited. Recall, Mental
D012153 Retention, Psychology The persistence to perform a learned behavior (facts or experiences) after an interval has elapsed in which there has been no performance or practice of the behavior. Psychological Retention,Retention (Psychology),Psychology Retention,Retention, Psychological
D002666 Psychology, Child Branch of psychology involving the study of normal and abnormal behavior of children. Child Psychology,Infant Psychology,Pediatric Psychology,Psychology, Infant,Psychology, Pediatric
D003118 Color Perception Mental processing of chromatic signals (COLOR VISION) from the eye by the VISUAL CORTEX where they are converted into symbolic representations. Color perception involves numerous neurons, and is influenced not only by the distribution of wavelengths from the viewed object, but also by its background color and brightness contrast at its boundary. Color Perceptions,Perception, Color,Perceptions, Color
D004193 Discrimination Learning Learning that is manifested in the ability to respond differentially to various stimuli. Discriminative Learning,Discrimination Learnings,Discriminative Learnings,Learning, Discrimination,Learning, Discriminative
D005260 Female Females

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