SUBSTITUTING NEW DETAILS FOR OLD - EFFECTS OF DELAYING POSTEVENT INFORMATION ON INFANT MEMORY

How that which we remember is selectively distorted by new information was studied in 3-month-old infants who learned to move a particular c rib mobile by operant foot kicking. Infants who were passively exposed to a novel mobile 1, 2, or 3 days later subsequently treated the nove l mobile as if they had actually been trained with it. Also, after the longest exposure delay, they no longer recognized the original mobile . Likewise, when the novel mobile was exposed after the longest delay, it could prime the forgotten training memory in a reactivation paradi gm, but the original mobile no longer could. These data reveal that wh at we remember about an event is selectively distorted by what we enco unter later. Moreover, the later in the retention interval we encounte r new postevent information, the greater is its impact on retention.