Infant recall memory and communication predicts later cognitive development
Section snippets
Participants
The participants were 26 typically developing 4-year-old Swedish children (16 girls; M = 50.4 months; S.D. = 1.47, range = 48.5–54.0). All of the children had previously been observed at approximately age 9 months (M = 40.7 weeks, S.D. = 1.0, range = 39–43) and 14 months (M = 62.8 weeks, S.D. = 2.9, range = 59–69).
According to Hollingshead's (1975) Four Factor Index of Social Status, the sample included predominately middle- and upper-class Caucasian families (M = 43.7; S.D. = 11.9) with a mean educational level of
Results
Table 1 presents the data from 9 to 14 months together with results at 50 months. Performance on the deferred imitation task is in line with previous results from a different Swedish sample in the same age-group (Heimann & Meltzoff, 1996). Results from the different scales on Early Social Communication Scales are also at appropriate levels (Mundy et al., 1996). The children in this study are assumed to be typically developing and the raw score is used on both the McCarthy Scales of Children's
Discussion
The first aim of the study was to investigate if measures of individual differences obtained in infancy predict later cognitive and language competencies; the results revealed that such a prediction existed. Nonverbal communication and recall memory in infancy displayed moderate positive correlations with cognitive abilities observed at 4 years. The lagged correlations were stronger for nonverbal communication, as compared with recall memory. Diverse nonverbal communicative measures bore
Acknowledgments
This research was supported by a major grant from the Swedish Council for Research in the Humanities and the Social Sciences (F0462/97) to Mikael Heimann. Additional support was provided through grants from the Center for Child & Adolescent Mental Health, Bergen, Norway to Mikael Heimann and from NIH, USA (HD-22514) to Andrew N. Meltzoff. We are grateful to the parents and children who participated in the study.
References (46)
- et al.
Deferred imitation across changes in context and object: Memory and generalization in 14-month-old infants
Infant Behavior and Development
(1996) - et al.
Developmental changes in deferred imitation by 6- to 24-month-old infants
Infant Behavior and Development
(1996) - et al.
Advances in early memory development research: Insights about the dark side of the moon
Developmental Review
(2004) - et al.
Individual differences in 3.5-month olds’ visual attention: What do they predict at 1 year?
Infant Behavior and Development
(2004) - et al.
Generalization of deferred imitation during the first year of life
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology
(2004) - et al.
Object representation, identity, and the paradox of early permanence: Steps toward a new framework
Infant Behavior and Development
(1998) - et al.
Responding to joint attention across the 6- through 24-month age period and early language acquisition
Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology
(2000) - et al.
Following the direction of gaze and language development in 6-month-olds
Infant Behavior and Development
(1998) - et al.
Individual differences in joint attention skill development in the second year
Infant Behavior and Development
(1998) - et al.
The predictive validity of nonverbal communicative skills in infants with perinatal hazards
Infant Behavior and Development
(1996)
Regulation of cognitive activity and early communication development in young autistic, mentally retarded, and young normal children
Developmental Psychobiology
Coordinating attention to people and objects in mother–infant and peer–infant interaction
Child Development
Understanding the link between joint attention and language
Developments in long-term explicit memory late in the first year of life: Behavioral and electrophysiological indices
Psychological Science
Continuity in mental development from infancy
Child Development
The development of gaze following and its relation to language
Developmental Science
Social cognition, joint attention, and communicative competence from 9 to 15 months of age
Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development
The dawning of a past: The emergence of long-term explicit memory in infancy
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General
Deferred imitation by 6- and 9-month-old infants: More evidence for declarative memory
Developmental Psychobiology
The developmental course of habituation in infancy and preschool outcome
Infancy
Early social attention impairments in autism: Social orienting, joint attention, and attention to distress
Developmental Psychology
Responding to joint attention and language development: A comparison to target location
Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research
Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test
Cited by (36)
The development of the object sequencing imitation task to measure working memory in preschoolers
2022, Journal of Experimental Child PsychologyCitation Excerpt :Performance on imitation tasks during infancy is also associated with later cognitive outcomes. Using a median split approach, infants who performed poorly on 1-step imitation tasks at 9 months of age had poorer general cognitive abilities at 4 years of age than infants who had performed well (Strid et al., 2006). Although previous tasks have been able to discriminate cross-age correlations in memory performance and associations with later cognitive outcomes (for review, see Brito et al., 2019), the restricted range of scores and age range may have limited the predictive value of imitation learning.
Variations in habitual sleep and relational memory in 6-month-olds
2019, Sleep HealthCitation Excerpt :A recent study also showed that infant deferred imitation ability predicted productive language at 16 months.21 The relation between infant deferred imitation performance and subsequent cognitive performance was even present in early childhood, where infants with low deferred imitation (and joint attention) scores had significantly lower cognitive ability scores (McCarthy Scales) at 50 months.22 In contrast to deferred imitation, there have been fewer studies looking at the relational binding task in infants.
The Action Imitation network and motor imitation in children and adolescents with autism
2017, NeuroscienceCitation Excerpt :Imitation also assists in social learning and form the foundation of future social development (Rogers et al., 2003). Early imitative skills (e.g., from 12 to 24 months) are found to be correlated with social engagement (Young et al., 2011) and predict nonverbal communication skills (Heimann et al., 2006), language development (McEwen et al., 2007; Rose et al., 2009), social understanding (Meltzoff, 1995), and cognitive skills (Strid et al., 2006). Thus, the ability to imitate has benefits in social and cognitive functioning in early stages of life.
Early declarative memory predicts productive language: A longitudinal study of deferred imitation and communication at 9 and 16 months
2016, Journal of Experimental Child PsychologyCitation Excerpt :Research during the last decade has demonstrated evidence of DI well before a child’s first birthday (e.g., Barr, Dowden, & Hayne, 1996; Bauer, Wiebe, Carver, Waters, & C. Nelson, 2003; Collie & Hayne, 1999; Heimann & Nilheim, 2004; Meltzoff, 1988a, 1988b; Rovee-Collier & Giles, 2010). A few previous studies have investigated the developmental trajectory of declarative memory measured by DI (Heimann & Meltzoff, 1996; Heimann et al., 2006; Kolling, Goertz, Frahsek, & Knopf, 2009; Strid et al., 2006). Heimann and Meltzoff (1996) found that the variation in observed DI was stable between 9 and 14 months.
Trajectories of imitation skills in preschoolers with autism spectrum disorders
2022, Journal of Neurodevelopmental Disorders