Memory in infants

     It’s not until about the latter half of the first year of life that infants begin to show what might be called explicit, or conscious, memory. During the first half year or so, and even in the womb, infants have various kinds of memory, shared by new animals. They display a primitive kind of learning known as habituation, in which they stop responding to a stimulus after they’ve encountered it a few times. Fruit files and sea slugs can do this, too. Newborns can also be conditioned as when the Russian scientist Pavlov taught dogs to salivate at the sound of a bell by ringing the bell every time he fed them. Even fruit flies can be conditioned.

     Young infants also demonstrate a simple kind of recognition memory when they show interest in things they haven’t seen or heard before, and when they recognize their mother’s voice and even their mother tongue.

     All these kinds of memory are automatic, and none are unique to humans. They correspond to what in an adult would be kinds of implicit memory, which means they happen independently of conscious awareness.