The effect of familiarization time, retention interval, and context change on adults' performance in the visual paired-comparison task.

In a series of three experiments, we examined the effects of familiarization time, retention interval, and changes in environmental context on adults' performance in the visual paired-comparison (VPC) task. The magnitude of adults' novelty preference increased as familiarization time increased, decreased as retention interval increased, and was impaired by a change in context after a delay. These data are highly consistent with data obtained in prior studies using the VPC task with infants and suggest that the VPC task could be used to measure memory across the life span. Copyright 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Dev Psychobiol 44: 146-155, 2004.