Facilitation of infants' recognition memory.

Infant's recognition memory, defined by novelty preferences, was found to be improved by providing 5--7-month-old infants with discriminable but related targets during the familiarization period. Facilitation of recognition was found for both photos of faces and for abstract patterns. It was necessary to present only 1 associated stimulus along with the to-be-remembered target in order to aid recognition. Such facilitation was dependent upon the kind of related target shown for study and was more likely to be demonstrated when simultaneous rather than successive exposure to related instances was allowed.