Why babies don't always remember what they have learned

Date:
August 21, 2020
Source:
Ruhr-University Bochum
Summary:
If and how babies recall what they have learned depends on their
mood: what they've learned when feeling calm is inaccessible when
they're acitive and vice versa. This was shown in a study with 96
children aged nine months.



FULL STORY ==========================================================================
If and how babies recall what they have learned depends on their
mood: what they've learned when feeling calm is inaccessible when
they're acitive and vice versa. This was shown in a study conducted by developmental psychologists at Ruhr-Universita"t Bochum (RUB) with 96
children aged nine months. They published their report in the journal
Child Development from 19. August 2020.


==========================================================================
One minute happy, next minute sad The mood of infants is unpredictable:
they may be playing happily one moment and be completely inconsolable
the next. "Surprisingly, it hadn't yet been understood whether these
changes in mood affect learning and memory in babies," says Professor
Sabine Seehagen, Head of the Developmental Psychology research group
at RUB. Studies with adults have shown that moods affect thinking. We
remember experiences that we had in a certain mood, especially when we
are in the same mood again.

In order to find out whether this phenomenon, which is known as
state-dependent memory, also exists in babies, the researchers studied 96 children aged nine months. In the first step, the babies either performed
quiet activities with their parent, such as looking at picture books,
or they went wild by hopping around; then, they watched an experimenter performing actions with a hand puppet, thus learning how to do this. "The aspect that interested us was whether or not the children were able to
imitate the observed actions a quarter of an hour later," as Sabine
Seehagen outlines the experiment. Just before the test started, some
of the babies were put into the same state as when they were learning,
while others were put into a different mood by playing the opposite games.

Access to memory content blocked The infants who had been in a different
mood when learning than when recalling what they'd learned could not
imitate the actions with the puppet: the memory performance was two
and a half times higher if they were in the same mood when learning
and when recalling what they'd learned. "This shows that fluctuations
in internal state at this age can prevent access to memory content,"
points out Seehagen.

The researchers assume that this may be an explanation for the fact
that adults can't remember any experiences of their early childhood. And parents may thus understand why their children can remember some things
and can't remember others: some things that a child learned in a quiet
mood may no longer be accessible when the child is upset. "In this study
we only looked at one age group," says Sabine Seehagen. "Further research
will be necessary to explore how the relation between mood and memory
develops with increasing age."

========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by Ruhr-University_Bochum. Note:
Content may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Sabine Seehagen, Silvia Schneider, Katharina Sommer, Laura La Rocca,
Carolin Konrad. State: Dependent Memory in Infants. Child
Development, 2020 DOI: 10.1111/cdev.13444 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/08/200821094854.htm

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