Long-term recall of event sequences in infancy

The first experiment shows that 11-month-olds can encode novel causal events from a brief period of observational learning, and recall much of the information after 24 h. The second experiment, using both a longitudinal and a cross-sectional design, shows recall of the same events after a delay of 3 months. The infants remembered more individual actions than whole sequences, but reproduced many of the events in their entirety (and always in correct order) after the long delay. Although they also reproduced arbitrarily ordered events immediately after being shown them at 11 months, they began to forget them after 24 h and showed essentially no recall for this type of event after 3 months. The experiments not only indicate long-lasting memory for briefly experienced events in infancy, they also suggest that the factors that organize recall at this young age are similar to those found in older children and adults.