Study: Babies remember nothing but the good times

Parents who spend their time playing with and talking to their five-month-old baby may wonder whether their child remembers any of it a day later. Thanks to a new BYU study, we now know that they at least remember the good times.

How emotions influence memory

The study, published in Infant Behaviour and Development, shows that babies are more likely to remember something if there is a positive emotion, or affect, that accompanies it.

“People study memory in infants, they study discrimination in emotional affect, but we are the first ones to study how these emotions influence memory,” said BYU psychology professor Ross Flom, lead author of the study.

Analysing how babies respond

Although the five-month-olds can’t talk, there are a number of different ways that researchers can analyse how the babies respond to testing treatments. In this particular study, they monitored the infants’ eye movements and how long they look at a test image.

The babies were set in front of a flat panelled monitor in a closed off partition and then exposed to a person on screen speaking to them with either a happy, neutral or angry voice. Immediately following the emotional exposure, they were shown a geometric shape.

To test their memory, the researchers did follow-up tests five minutes later and again one day later. In the follow-up test, babies were shown two side-by-side geometric shapes: a brand new one, and the original one from the study.

The researchers then were able to record how many times the baby looked from one image to the next and how long they spent looking at each image. Babies’ memories didn’t improve if the shape had been paired with a negative voice, but they performed significantly better at remembering shapes attached to positive voices.

Positive affect heightens attention

“We think what happens is that the positive affect heightens the babies’ attention system and arousal,” Flom said. “By heightening those systems, we heighten their ability to process and perhaps remember this geometric pattern.”

This paper was co-authored with Professor Brock Kirwan as well undergraduate and masters students Rebecca B. Janis and Darren J. Garcia. It follows a string of Flom’s significant research on infants’ ability to understand each others’ moods, the moods of dogs, monkeys, and classical music.

We often talk about the cost of raising kids – from the nappies through to school fees and feeding teenagers – but that’s just the financial cost. What about the emotional cost? We often talk about the cost of raising kids – from the nappies through to school fees and feeding teenagers – but that’s just the financial cost. What about the emotional cost?

Article source: Brigham Young University via Science Daily.

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