Forgetting functions of reactivated memories over the first year of life

A reactivation treatment alleviates forgetting by reexposing organisms to an isolated component of the original event. How long a reactivated memory persists, however, has not been studied systematically. Presently, we documented the retention of a reactivated memory with 6‐, 9‐, and 12‐month‐old human infants. All infants learned an operant task, forgot it, and then received a brief reactivation treatment 1 week later. They were tested after increasingly longer delays until the reactivated memory also was forgotten. To provide a picture of retention over the entire first year of life, we combined their data with corresponding data previously obtained from 3‐ and 6‐month‐olds in an equivalent task. Although the maximum duration of original retention increases linearly between 3 and 12 months of age, infants consistently forgot the reactivated memory at the same rate as the original one over this period. In essence, a reactivation treatment doubles the life of the memory. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Dev Psychobiol 41: 277–288, 2002. Published online in Wiley InterScience ( www.interscience.wiley.com ). DOI 10.1002/dev.10044