LONG-TERM RECOGNITION MEMORY FOR FACES ASSESSED BY VISUAL PAIRED-COMPARISON IN 3-MONTH-OLD AND 6-MONTH-OLD INFANTS

It has been argued that operant conditioning is the only type of long- term memory present in infants prior to 6 months of age. In this study , memory for faces was investigated in 3- and 6-month-old infants with a visual paired-comparison task. In Experiment 1, infants were habitu ated to a face presented in different poses; recognition was assessed after a 2-min or a 24-hr retention interval. The 6-month-old infants a nd the male but not the female 3-month-old infants exhibited novelty p references. A 2nd experiment showed that 3-month-old female infants we re delayed relative to male infants in their face-processing ability r ather than in their memory capacity. The results of Experiment 3 demon strated in 3-month-olds an electrophysiological correlate of delayed r ecognition memory. These findings are discussed in the context of the neural systems thought to be involved in visual recognition memory (bu t not in procedural memory), namely the limbic system.