Decreases in the response latency to priming over the first year of life

We previously reported that the latency of responding to a memory prime in a reactivation procedure decreases between 3 and 6 months of age. The prese nt study extended this analysis through the first year of life. In this stu dy, 7-, 9-, and 12-month-olds learned an operant task. One week after they had forgotten it, infants were exposed to a component of the original event as a memory prime and were tested after different delays for evidence of r etention. Although the interval between the original event and priming incr eased linearly with age-from 3 weeks at 6 months to 9 weeks at 12 months, t he latency of responding after priming decreased linearly with age-from 1 h r at 6 months to 0-1 s at 12 months. The latency of responding after primin g was not task-specific; at 6 months, it was identical in two different tas ks. These results provide additional evidence that priming in reactivation studies with infants is the same automatic, perceptual identification pheno menon as repetition priming in studies with adults. (C) 1999 John Wiley & S ons, Inc.