Age-related changes in memory reactivation by 1- and 2-year-old human infants.

In three experiments, we examined the effect of a single reactivation treatment on retention by 1- and 2-year-old human infants who were tested in the visual recognition memory (VRM) paradigm. In all experiments, infants were familiarized with a visual stimulus and were tested after a delay. In the absence of a reactivation treatment, infants of both ages exhibited forgetting but exposure to a reactivation treatment alleviated forgetting after the same delay. When the duration of the original familiarization period was only 10 s, the minimum duration of an effective reminder treatment was 1 s for 2-year-olds, but was 5 s for 1-year-olds. When the duration of the original familiarization period was increased to 30 s, however, a 1-s reminder also alleviated forgetting by 1-year-olds. Copyright 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.