Infant Short Term Memory and the Attention Span - Essay Example

Running head: INFANT MEMORY Infant Short Term Memory and the Attention Span You're This research was carried out to bring a more cohesive idea into the cognitive development of infants. It focuses on attention span and also on the various stages upon where they develop certain cognitive functions. These skills vary between infants and cognitive skills in particular develop at various developmental stages depending upon whether an infant was born full-term or premature. Normally infants are highly aware of their surrounding environment and engage in it fluidly but their attention spans are often limited. This is the main focus of this research and many essential points of the developmental process will be discussed in the literature. Infant Short Term Memory and the Attention Span The ability of carrying out various mental tasks consists of the use of cognitive functions. This developmental phase varies between infants in regard to whether they are full term infants or premature and also on what their short term memory capabilities are as well. Short-term memory in itself is a limited function even for adults, and infants in particular haven't quite mastered the skill of recalling events that happen in a short time frame (Cowan et al 1999, p. 1082). Nevertheless, in regards to attention span and some other cognitive abilities within infants, there appears to be a response to differentiating stimuli which shows that depending on what is used to gain their attention and maintain it varies from infant to infant. One study in particular was carried out on infants to gain an idea on what holds and keeps their attention span, with this one pertaining to what effects synchronized lighting has on infants (Colombo & Richman 2002, p. 475). This study showed that infants did pay attention to the timed lighting effect as their heart rate was found to increase in a pattern when the lights would flicker at specific times. This of course showed that even though infants aren't alert and wholly focused on every inanimate object that they come in contact with some of these various stimuli have a more profound affect than others. Furthermore, this one study was able to pinpoint the fact that infants seem to have the exact ability as adult people to be able to time exactly when a light simulation is going to take place, which shows that they are able to keep track of time when it is in regards to simulations of patterns. This in itself gives a positive idea of how important attention span is in infants as it is one of the key elements in contiguity learning within the early educational process (Colombo & Richman 2002, p. 477). In the past it was presumed that infants have a very short attention span but as more research has been carried out it is now being questioned just how short their attention really is. The reason this is stated is because, just like the previous test mentioned, this next study showed that babies might actually have the ability to distinguish characteristics of adding and subtracting, of course with a minute set of numbers (Wakeley et al 2000, p. 1525). When an infant is shown a display of a perceptual nature their attention span seems to be more focused, especially if the elements in the display are in the amount of three's, but no bigger amount than four. Research has shown that when cognitive researchers have added to the display or taken away the infants have been very alert to the actions and pay very close attention in what appears to be a detailed manner towards problem solving. This seemingly refutes the belief that infants attentions span is short as it is being shown that this varies depending upon what the baby is being given to study and explore (Wakeley et al 2000, p. 1526). This type of study however did not give the same results for all infants that were included in it but even so, the majority of infants from the age range of 4 months to 9 months were very alert to the problem solving with innate objects and kept a solidified attention span on the activities that were occurring in front of them. This even seems to show that the attention span of infants and toddlers as well might develop faster than what use to be perceived, or it could simply be a variation in the stimulation being used as in this study it was the use of dolls and the previous was a study on the timing of light simulation. However, both showed strong attention and cognitive abilities in young infants. Skills developing such as these give a strong point of view that a large percentage of infants will be able to effectively store memories and recall them from short and long term memory as they gradually progress through the various developmental stages. Attention span directly correlates with the ability to retrieve short term memories as it can at times be hard to recall what happened a few hours ago if you are easily distracted, especially with young toddlers. Therefore these studies that are emphasizing the strength of attention span gives validity to the point being made which is that some infants have a more inept ability to focus than others do and thereby would have an easier time recalling short term information. Another example that shows how crucial the attention span is of infants is in regards to how they develop the ability to be able to grasp an item by focusing on it before-hand (McCarty et al 2001, p. 973). Infants that are in the age of 6 to 7.5 months actually focus in on an object visually, judging how far they will have to reach or move to get to it and how they will have to hold their hand. This is a sure sign that they are effectively engaging their cognitive abilities and that their attention span is not short at all but rather very long when engaged on an item in their environment. Every cognitive skill that an infant learns is stored in their memory banks, the short term and the long term. Therefore, even at a young age they are using the necessary skills that are in correlation with short term memory but they simply haven't developed the ability to fully access those short term memories, at least not until they are in the latter infancy stages and early toddler years. However, with the idea of trying to reach and grasp an object, infants must use their memorization skills to try and recall how to effectively reach out and grasp certain items, so in reality they are already using their short term memory in the young infant stage, but not as thoroughly as in later toddler years (McCarty et al 2001, p. 974). This shows that fine motor skills are developing, as well as visual cognition and memory skills as well. So it is easily seen that each stage of the learning and developmental process actually utilizes many cognitive processes in order to keep up with the emerging mind of the developing infant. What is being found by this research is the fact that short term information gathering is crucial in long term understanding in an infant's cognitive development (Ross-Sheehy et al 2003, p. 1807). Obviously visual short term memory abilities seem to develop sooner than other short term memory skills do. Infants are able to recall how to grasp an object by retrieving the short term memory that they have of it. However this is a visual cognitive ability and even though it uses mental competency skills it focuses more hardily on the visual interpretation that the infant has of an object. What the short term abilities are, that is being presented here and of which have a detrimental role in infant development beginning at the stage of 6 months to 13 months is as follows: Infants can create memory representations rapidly Infants can only store a handful of representative memories at one time Infants repeatedly experiment with these memories, such as with grasping, and other visual cognition abilities (Ross-Sheehy et al 2003, p. 1808). When these characteristics of infants short term memory abilities at this age are compared to the long ranging memories that are stored there is a striking difference found between the two as the following example gives validity too. In long term memory the representations are formed much slower The ability of the infant to store information and memories is unlimited The memories suffer from little deterioration over time and therefore can be easily recalled (Ross-Sheehy et al 2003, p. 1809). So it is easily perceived now that around the age of 6 months and beyond the infant has learned and developed efficiently enough to be able to recall a visual short term memory such as grasping an object and holding it correctly, as they recalled doing previously. Psychologists have been able to make a determination such as what has been described by the utilization of different stimulus which has been stated in this literature. For example, psychologists judge how long an infant will stare at an innate object before they take it away and produce something else entirely. Later the psychologist will reproduce the initial object to see if the infant can recall seeing it previously. What has been deciphered out of this is the fact that repetition of the stimuli increases the infants' awareness of it and a familiarity of the item develops. An image of the item is stored in the infants' short term memory banks and therefore when they see it again they can recall it, due to the repetitiveness of which it has been shown to them (Ross-Sheehy et al 2003, p. 1809). However, when this process was changed with infants that were between 5 months to 7 months there were variations found. Infants this young could only seem to show familiarization with an object if they had been allowed to study it repeatedly for long periods of time and even then their ability to show any familiarization or knowledge of being aware of it previously was limited. Researchers state that gathered evidence defines an infant's short term and long term memory capabilities to be limited as was stated and therefore it shows that this type of ability changes over time, especially as they go through more developmental milestones. Nevertheless, their skills are developing rapidly in infancy with the first year of life being one of the most crucial in developing the building blocks to expand upon later in life. So the initial stages of short term memory abilities gradually grow as the baby ages, which has been mentioned as well (Ross-Sheehy et al 2003, p. 1809). In conclusion this research has given valid descriptive ideas of how an infant's short term and long term memory capabilities change over time. In the earlier stages of life it has been shown that short term memory is in fact limited and therefore is still developing. However, it was also found that if a redundant type of method was utilized to help in the infants' memory capability then they were able to show familiarization with an object. This was found to change when the time they were given to look at an object was changed to just a few seconds. In older infants this research has proven that the short term memory is directly interlaced with visual cognition and it is through visual stimulation that an infant is able to recall the item by showing familiarization to it in various ways. Therefore in finality, this author has shown that there are various cognitive skills that are developed through the different stages of infancy and of which have a direct role in the later development of short term memorization skills. Attention span, visual cognition, mental stimuli, interaction with the environment, and many other factors play a pertinent role in the infants developing cognitive skills. In other words, the infant stage is the building stage of cognition and the initial skills of short term and long term memory capabilities which begin and continue to develop throughout each stage of development as the months and years progress. References Cowan, Nelson & Nugent, Laura & Elliot, Emily & Ponomarev, Igor & Saults, Scott. (1999). The Role of Attention in the Development of Short-Term Memory: Age Differences in the Verbal Span of Apprehension. Child Development, 70, 1082-1097. Colombo, John & Richman, Allen. (2002). Infant Timekeeping: Attention and Temporal Estimation in 4-Month Old Infants. Psychological Science, 13, 475-478. McCarty, Michael & Clifton, Rachael & Ashmead, Clifton & Lee, Phillip & Goubet, Natalie. (2001). How Infants Use Vision for Grasping Objects. Child Development, 72, 973-987. Wakeley, Ann & Rivera, Susan & Langer, Jonas. (2000). Can Young Infants Add and Subtract Child Development, 71, 1525-1534. Ross-Sheehy, Shannon & Oaks, Lisa & Luck, Steven. (2003). The Development of Visual Short-Term Memory Capacity in Infants. Child Development, 74, 1807-1822. Read More