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Published on: December 4, 2013
Attentional Measures of Memory in Typically Developing and Hypoxic-Ischemic Injured Infants
Jennifer B Wagner1,2, Adeline Jabès3, Agatha Norwood4
1Department of Psychology, College of Staten Island, City University of New York, Staten Island, NY 10314, USA.
Insights
Infants with hypoxic-ischemic injury (HII) show similar visual recognition memory but subtle differences in relational memory compared to typically developing peers. These findings suggest potential early alterations in memory processing mechanisms following birth HII.
Area of Science:
- Developmental Neuroscience
- Cognitive Psychology
- Pediatric Neurology
Background:
- Hypoxic-ischemic injury (HII) at birth is linked to developmental differences, including impaired memory.
- Early life memory development is crucial for cognitive outcomes.
- Recognition memory in infancy is a key indicator of cognitive function.
Purpose of the Study:
- To assess recognition memory in infants with and without HII using eye-tracking paradigms.
- To compare visual paired comparison (VPC) and relational memory (RM) performance between HII and typically developing (TD) infants.
- To identify potential early differences in memory processing mechanisms related to HII.
Main Methods:
- Employed visual paired comparison (VPC) and relational memory (RM) eye-tracking paradigms.
- Tested 6- and 12-month-old infants, including those with HII and TD controls.
- Analyzed novelty preference and familiarity preference during memory tasks with and without interference.
Main Results:
- Both HII and TD infants showed similar novelty preference in VPC at 12 months, but not at 6 months or after a delay.
- TD infants demonstrated novelty preference in RM, shifting to familiarity preference with interference.
- HII infants exhibited subtle differences in attention to familiar and novel faces during RM compared to TD infants.
Conclusions:
- Recognition memory assessed by VPC appears comparable between HII and TD infants.
- Relational memory processing shows subtle differences in HII infants, suggesting altered underlying mechanisms.
- Further research is needed to understand the predictive value of these early attentional patterns for later memory outcomes.
Abstract:
Hypoxic-ischemic injury (HII) at birth has been found to relate to differences in development, including decreased memory performance. The current study assessed recognition memory in 6- and 12-month-old HII infants and typically developing (TD) infants using two eye-tracking paradigms well suited to explore explicit memory processes early in life: visual paired comparison (VPC) and relational memory (RM). During the VPC, infants were familiarized to a face and then tested for their novelty preference immediately and after a two-minute delay. At 6 months, neither HII nor TD showed a VPC novelty preference at immediate delay, but at 12 months, both groups did; after the two-minute delay, no group showed a novelty preference. During RM, infants were presented with blocks containing a learning phase with three different scene-face pairs, and a test phase with one of the three scenes and all three faces appearing simultaneously. When there was no interference from other scene-face pairs between learning and test, 6-month-old TD showed evidence of an early novelty preference, but when there was interference, they revealed an early familiarity preference. For 12-month-old TD, some evidence for a novelty preference during RM was seen regardless of interference. Although HII and TD showed similar recognition memory on the VPC, when looking at RM, HII infants showed subtle differences in their attention to the familiar and novel faces as compared to their TD peers, suggesting that there might be subtle differences in the underlying memory processing mechanisms between HII and TD. More work is needed to understand how these attentional patterns might be predictive of later memory outcomes.
