Visual short-term memory for complex objects in 6- and 8-month-old infants.

Infants' visual short-term memory (VSTM) for simple objects undergoes dramatic development: Six-month-old infants can store in VSTM information about only a simple object presented in isolation, whereas 8-month-old infants can store information about simple objects presented in multiple-item arrays. This study extended this work to examine the development of infants' VSTM for complex objects during this same period (N = 105). Using the simultaneous streams change detection paradigm, Experiment 1 confirmed the previous developmental trajectory between 6 and 8 months. Experiment 2 showed that doubling the exposure time did not enhance 6-month-old infants' change detection, demonstrating that the developmental change is not due to encoding speed. Thus, VSTM for simple and complex objects appears to follow the same developmental trajectory.