Newborn infants' memory for speech sounds retained over 24 hours.

Abstract

Newborn infants were exposed to speech sounds in 2 sessions separated by 24 hr. Their habituation and recovery to these sounds were assessed by spontaneous head orienting toward the sound's location. Thirty-six neonates were assigned to 1 of 3 groups: a no-change group that heard the same word both days; a change group that heard a different word each day; and a Day 2 age-control group that heard 1 of the 2 words for the 1st time on Day 2. Both groups habituated to the sound on Day 1 and recovered head turning after the 24-hr delay, but infants who heard the same word again responded less than did age controls. In addition, these infants also began turning away from the sound, unlike the other 2 groups. Following habituation, all groups displayed comparable levels of recovery by turning toward a novel posttest stimulus. Neonates appeared to retain memory for a specific sound over a 24-hr period when presented with the same sound over both days. The extent to which the newborn infant retains information has been difficult to establish. Numerous studies of habituation (for review, see Clifton & Nelson, 1976; Zelazo, Weiss, & Tarquinio, 1991) and conditioning (for review, see Rovee-Collier & Lipsitt, 1982) attest to the newborn's ability to retain sensory information about specific stimuli and contingencies between stimulus events. This large body of work has examined the limits of retention over short periods, usually within single sessions lasting 1 hr or less. Much less information is available on memory for stimuli or events over longer periods. One of the earliest efforts to extend habituation was successful in showing retention of an habituated heart-rate response to repeated auditory stimuli after 24 hr (Keen, Chase, & Graham, 1965). Newborns who were presented with the same sound over 2 consecutive days responded less to the stimulus on the second day compared with a control group of the same age tested for the first time. A subsequent study in the same laboratory that tested newborns over 5 consecutive days failed to replicate the

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