title: The effects of exposure to dynamic expressions of affect on 5-month-olds' memory.
abstract: The purpose of this study was to examine the behavioral effects of adults' communicated affect on 5-month-olds' visual recognition memory. Five-month-olds were exposed to a dynamic and bimodal happy, angry, or neutral affective (face-voice) expression while familiarized to a novel geometric image. After familiarization to the geometric image and exposure to the affective expression, 5-month-olds received either a 5-min or 1-day retention interval. Following the 5-min retention interval, infants exposed to the happy affective expressions showed a reliable preference for a novel geometric image compared to the recently familiarized image. Infants exposed to the neutral or angry affective expression failed to show a reliable preference following a 5-min delay. Following the 1-day retention interval, however, infants exposed to the neutral expression showed a reliable preference for the novel geometric image. These results are the first to demonstrate that 5-month-olds' visual recognition memory is affected by the presentation of affective information at the time of encoding.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Brigham Young University, United States. Electronic address: flom@byu.edu.
authors.forename: Ross
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Flom
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Brigham Young University, United States.
authors.forename: Rebecca B
authors.initials: RB
authors.lastname: Janis
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Brigham Young University, United States.
authors.forename: Darren J
authors.initials: DJ
authors.lastname: Garcia
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Brigham Young University, United States.
authors.forename: C Brock
authors.initials: CB
authors.lastname: Kirwan
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000339:Affect / Q000502:physiology*; D001143:Arousal / Q000502:physiology; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology; D019260:Expressed Emotion / Q000502:physiology*; D005149:Facial Expression; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D021641:Recognition, Psychology / Q000502:physiology; D012727:Sex Characteristics
keywords: Affect; Arousal; Memory