title: The role of verbal labels on flexible memory retrieval at 12-months of age.
abstract: The provision of verbal labels enhances 12-month-old infants' memory flexibility across a form change in a puppet imitation task (Herbert, 2011), although the mechanisms for this effect remain unclear. Here we investigate whether verbal labels can scaffold flexible memory retrieval when task difficulty increases and consider the mechanism responsible for the effect of language cues on early memory flexibility. Twelve-month-old infants were provided with English, Chinese, or empty language cues during a difficult imitation task, a combined change in the puppet's colour and form at the test (Hayne et al., 1997). Imitation performance by infants in the English language condition only exceeded baseline performance after the 10-min delay. Thus, verbal labels facilitated flexible memory retrieval on this task. There were no correlations between infants' language comprehension and imitation performance. Thus, it is likely that verbal labels facilitate both attention and categorisation during encoding and retrieval.
authors: Department of Psychology, Lancaster University, Lancaster, LA1 4YF, UK.
authors: Gemma
authors: G
authors: Taylor
authors: Graduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania, USA.
authors: Hao
authors: H
authors: Liu
authors: Department of Psychology, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, S10 2TN, UK; School of Psychology, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, 2522, Australia. Electronic address: jane_herbert@uow.edu.au.
authors: Jane S
authors: JS
authors: Herbert
mesh_terms: D002657:Child Development / Q000502:physiology*; D003210:Concept Formation / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007100:Imitative Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall / Q000502:physiology*; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology*
keywords: Imitation; Infant; Memory development; Memory flexibility