New evidence for rapid development of color-location binding in infants' visual short-term memory.
Change-detection tasks reveal that infants' ability to bind color to location in visual short-term memory (VSTM) develops rapidly: Seven-month-old infants, but not 6-month-old infants, detect that successive arrays of 3 objects are different if they contain the same colors in different locations (Oakes et al., 2006). Here we test a counterintuitive consequence of the hypothesis that six-month-old infants are unable to bind colors to locations: When comparing two successive stimulus arrays, these infants will often compare noncorresponding items, making it impossible for them to distinguish between identical arrays and nonidentical arrays. As a result, they will not show a preference for changing arrays over nonchanging arrays even when all of the items change. We tested this prediction by presenting 6- and 7-month-old infants (N = 36) with nonchanging displays of three items and changing displays in which all three items simultaneoulsy changed colors. As predicted, 7-month-old infants, but not 6-month-old infants, responded to the difference between these changing and nonchanging displays, providing additional evidence that the ability to bind colors to locations develops rapidly across this age range.
Oakes
Lisa M
LM
The University of California, Davis.
Messenger
Ian M
IM
Ross-Sheehy
Shannon
S
Luck
Steven J
SJ