Looking Behavior at Test and Relational Memory in 6‐Month‐Old Infants

Small-scale eye-tracking research lends support to behavioral studies of relational memory by 6 months of life. Here, in the largest eye-tracking test of relational memory to date (n = 276), we replicate these findings and examine the impact of excluding data based on looking behavior characteristics at test. Past work examining infants' preferential looking toward arbitrary-paired objects and scenes has excluded infants from analysis based upon “insufficient looking” at test. Yet, research suggests that variation in looking behavior may be associated with looking patterns during encoding, as well as trait-like differences in visual and cognitive processing. Similar to past research, we observed evidence for relational memory among 6-month-olds. In keeping with past research, when infants were excluded based on “insufficient looking,” we observed evidence for relational memory only when infants were tested immediately. However, when exclusion criteria were relaxed, infants specifically demonstrated preferential looking during a presumably more difficult delay-plus-interference condition. Moreover, analyses revealed that looking behavior during encoding was associated with looking behavior at test. Together, results suggest that infants do possess rudimentary relational memory capabilities, but that experimenters' ability to detect these capabilities is influenced by both experimental conditions and individual differences in looking behavior.