BYU study shows positive emotions enable an infant's memory

BYU study shows positive emotions enable an infant's memory

(Mark A. Philbrick/BYU Photo)


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PROVO — Wide eyes, a bright smile and a sing-song voice often accompany an adults correspondence with a baby, and a new study claims this positive interaction is advantageous to an infant’s memory.

Psychologists at Brigham Young University studied the effect emotion has on a 5-month-old infant’s memory and found that positive emotions enable a baby to remember something they saw the day before, according to a news release.

Study author and BYU psychology professor Ross Flom said this study is the first of its kind.

“As adults, many of the memories we recall are emotional events,” Flom said. “So we wanted to know if exposure to emotion, or affect, influenced memory in young babies.”

During the study, 120 babies were seated in front of video monitors that were surrounded by black paneling, and were exposed to a person on-screen addressing them with either a happy, neutral or angry voice, according to the study that was published in Infant Behavior and Development.

Directly after hearing the voice, the infants were shown a geometric kaleidoscope image.


I think perhaps the positive effect is heightening the babies' arousal and emotion which helps promote their memory for that event.

–Ross Flom, BYU psychology professor


Researchers tested half of the infants' memories five minutes following the exposure and the other half was tested the day after the exposure.

“We picked a fairly challenging event because if it was too easy, they’d show memory in any condition, and if it was too hard, they’d never show memory,” Flom said.

During the follow-up tests, the infants were shown two geometrical shapes: one being the image they’d seen the day before, the other a brand new image.

Researchers studied the infants' memories of the shapes by noting how long the babies looked at both of the images.

If the baby had been exposed to a positive voice, they remembered the shape that accompanied it.

“We thought, like you or I, they’d show memory after exposure to positive and negative events," Flom said. "That was not the case for the 5-month-olds. They just showed memory for the positive event.”

Flom said he thinks the reason babies didn’t react to the negative voice may be because they aren’t used to negative emotions yet.

“I think perhaps the positive effect is heightening the babies' arousal and emotion which helps promote their memory for that event,” Flom said.

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