A dissociation between recognition and reactivation: The renewal effect at 3 months of age

Extinction allows organisms to adapt to an ever-changing environment. Despite its theoretical and applied significance, extinction has never been systematically studied with human infants. Using the operant mobile task, we examined whether 3-month-olds would exhibit evidence of original learning following extinction. In a recognition paradigm, infants exhibited renewal when tested in the acquisition context (ABA renewal) or a neutral context (ABC and AAB renewal) 1 day following extinction (Experiment 1a) and spontaneous recovery 3 days following extinction (Experiment 1b). In Experiments 2a-2b, we used a reminder paradigm to examine whether the extinguished response could be reinstated after the operant response had been forgotten. We failed, however, to find reinstatement of extinguished responding after spontaneous forgetting, regardless of the reminder and test contexts. We attributed this retention failure to competing responses at test. Although extinguished responding is recovered during infancy, this effect is elusive after the response has been forgotten.