ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the effects of redundant (audio-visual) and non-redundant (visual) familiarization on infants’ memory for the unimodal property of visual orientation. Infants were randomly assigned to one of two familiarization conditions (bimodal auditory-visual or unimodal visual) and one of three retention intervals (5-minutes, 2-weeks, or 1-month). Following the familiarization phase, infants received two 60s test trials. The visual preference memory test for orientation consisted of two silent, side-by-side, 60s trials of the hammer moving at familiar orientation, and the adjacent monitor presented the same hammer moving at the novel orientation. At the two-week retention interval 5-month-olds demonstrated no preference for either the familiar or unfamiliar event following bimodal or unimodal familiarization. Five-month-olds, however, demonstrated a novelty preference at the 5-minute delay when the event was presented unimodally, but not bimodally. Nine-month-olds in the bimodal and unimodal conditions exhibited a familiarity preference following a 1-month delay.
