Effects of encoding and retrieval conditions on infants' recognition memory.

The present study investigated the effect of the relation between conditions at encoding and retrieval on infants' performance on a paired-comparison recognition test. 64 9-month-old infants were given 40 sec to visually or visually and haptically explore a 3-dimensional object. Subsequently, during a 10-sec recognition trial infants were presented with the familiar object and a novel object and their response to each was monitored. Half of the infants from each familiarization condition were permitted to inspect the test-trial stimuli visually, while the other half inspected the stimuli visually and haptically. Thus, in the present study the infant's mode of exploration was either the same during encoding and retrieval or different. Infants demonstrated recognition of the familiar object (via novelty preference) only when mode of exploration was constant across the encoding and retrieval trials. The relation between the conditions at encoding and retrieval is thus an important determinant of the infants' performance on a paired-comparison recognition test.