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The effect of crying on long-term memory in infancy

J W Fagen, P S Ohr, L K Fleckenstein

    Child Development
    |December 1, 1985
    PubMed

    Insights

    Infant crying after a reward change impairs long-term memory retention. However, a brief reactivation treatment can restore memory, even after crying occurred.

    Area of Science:

    • Developmental Psychology
    • Cognitive Neuroscience
    • Infant Learning

    Background:

    • Infants develop expectations about rewards.
    • Changes in reward components can violate these expectations.
    • The emotional and cognitive consequences of such violations in infants are not fully understood.

    Purpose of the Study:

    • To investigate the impact of infant crying on memory for learned responses.
    • To determine if crying acts as an amnesic agent.
    • To explore methods for mitigating memory loss following crying.

    Main Methods:

    • Infants learned to operate a crib mobile for rewards.
    • A change in reward components induced crying in some infants.
    • Memory retention was tested at different time intervals (1 day, 1 week, 3 weeks).
    • A reactivation treatment was administered in one experiment.

    Main Results:

    • Infants who cried showed no memory retention after 1 week, but retained information after 1 day.
    • Forgetting was accelerated in infants who cried.
    • A brief reactivation treatment restored memory at 3 weeks, irrespective of prior crying.
    • A recency effect influenced the reactivation treatment's efficacy.

    Conclusions:

    • Infant crying following a violated reward expectation acts as an amnesic agent, causing accelerated forgetting.
    • Memory reactivation can overcome this amnesic effect.
    • Understanding infant emotional responses is crucial for cognitive development research.

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