On the development of declarative memory

In the visual paired-comparison task, which has been used to demonstrate memory abilities in human infants, Ss view pairs of pictures and then view new pictures paired with old ones. Memory is demonstrated when Ss spend more time looking at new pictures than at old ones. In a series of studies involving amnesic patients and normal Ss, the authors evaluated what kind of memory is exhibited in this task. The results suggest that performance ordinarily depends on the brain structures essential for declarative memory. These and other findings suggest that the visual paired-comparison test also depends on declarative memory when the task is given to human infants. Thus, successful performance on this task by infants probably reflects an early capacity for declarative memory. The relevance of these findings to the phenomenon of infantile amnesia is discussed.