An examination of interference effects in infants' memory for faces.

2 experiments with 18-week-old infants employed an interference paradigm to study infant visual memory. The infants were habituated to a repeated stimulus, given several trials with 1 or more interpolated stimuli, and then tested for recognition of the original stimulus. In Experiment 1, both amount of exposure and the similarity of the potentially interfering material to the original habituation stimulus were manipulated. Neither produced a significant interference effect, although some effect may have been shown by subjects who habituated to the interference stimult did demonstrate more clearly long-term retention of the originally remembered material. It was concluded from both studies that infant visual memory is a robust phenomenon, relatively immune to interference under most conditions.