What do infants recall of their lives? Memory for specific events by one- to two-year-olds.

Abstract

Until as recently as a decade ago, it was widely believed that infants and children younger than age three were unable to recall the events of their lives. Several developments, including findings of representational competence in infants in the first year of life and evidence of long-term recall abilities in children as young as three, have led to revision of this assumption. Through application of the technique of elicited imitation of action sequences, my colleagues and I have gathered evidence that children in the one- to two-year age range are able to recall specific events. Within this age period, age is not the major determinant of whether an event will be recalled: Even 13-month-olds recall events after long periods of time. Children demonstrate event memory both nonverbally and verbally. Rather than by age, recall primarily is determined by what the child is asked to remember, the number of exposures to the event, and the availability of cues or reminders of the event. These findings have led to rejection of the traditional assumption of a mnemonically incompetent one- to two-year-old and provided impetus for identification of the factors that maintain the accessibility of early memories over the transition from infancy to early childhood.

Deferred Imitation of Action Sequences in Developmental Amnesia

“…The finding that more causal target action pairs but not individual target actions were recalled after a delay suggests that the correct recall of the temporal order of causal sequences is not merely due to an increase in the production of causal compared to arbitrary actions. This provides strong evidence that memory for the order of causal sequences is better than memory for the order of arbitrary sequences and is consistent with other studies of nonverbal imitation (Bauer, 1996;Bauer, Hertsgaard, Wewerka, et al, 1995;Bauer & Hertsgaard, 1993;Bauer, 1992), and category-ordered versus unordered word-list recall (Channon & Daum, 2000;Channon, Daum, Polkey, et al, 1989). However, the present findings provide no evidence to support the prediction that the DA group would be less impaired relative to controls at recall of the causally ordered sequences compared to arbitrarily ordered sequences.…”

“…Although this finding was unexpected on the basis of many previous studies (e.g., Bauer, Hertsgaard, Wewerka, et al, 1995;Bauer, 1992Bauer, , 1996, it is consistent with the findings of McDonough et al (1995). As the same sequences were used in the two studies, this result likely reflects the properties of the props involved in these particular sequences.…”

“…This effect is obtained even when equivalent numbers of individual target actions are produced in both conditions (Bauer, 1996), indicating that the differences in ordered recall are not an artifact of differential opportunities for ordering. Moreover, the performance at baseline (i.e., without exposure to the target actions) does not typically differ between these sequence structures, suggesting that the superior ordered recall of causal sequences is not due to their greater transparency (e.g., Bauer, Hertsgaard, & Wewerka, 1995;Bauer, 1992Bauer, , 1996.…”

“…In this way, recall of the order of causally ordered sequences might be considered more ''semantic'' compared to arbitrarily ordered sequences. Thus, although production of the sequences should be independent of sequence structure at baseline (e.g., Bauer, Hertsgaard, Wewerka, et al, 1995;Bauer, 1992Bauer, , 1996, patients with DA, having relatively preserved semantic memory, might be less impaired relative to controls at recall of the causally ordered sequences compared to the arbitrarily ordered sequences (i.e., a Group  Assessment Condition  Sequence Structure interaction).…”

The rise of the metamind

“…Indeed, recent research has shown that young infants learn from single events and show deferred imitation (e.g. Bauer 1996;Rovee-Collier 1997).…”