how do we study memory systems in infants

• conditioning paradigms and deffered imitations are techniques used to study memory systems in infants
• one of the conditiong paradgim used 2-6 month olds more specifically the mobile conjugate reinforcement task
• in the mobile reinforcement task the babys go through three different phases the baseline phase, learning phase and test phase
• in the baseline phase a ribbon is attached to the babys foot at one end and the side of the crib at the other end
• in the learning phase a ribbon is attached to the infants foot at one end and at the other end of the ribbon was a hanging toy that moves which was the mobile.
• in the test phase, the baby was put back in the cot and this was the same as the baseline phase and foot movements were observed compared to the baseline phase
• another conditioning paradigm used trains to study 6-18 month year old babbies
• this also had 3 phases with first baseline phase which was pressing the button and it having no effect
• in the learning phase a button press moves the train
• in the test phase the button press has no effect and was comapred to the rate of button pressing to baseline
• on both paradigms infants whos response rate is notbaly above the baseline said to have learnt so retaining information is no longer for older infants