An operant conditioning procedure in which infants aged between 6- and 18-months learn to press a lever in order to produce movement of a model train around a track. As with the mobile conjugate reinforcement task, but designed for older infants, infants are subjected to training sessions. To begin with, there is a non-reinforcement phase, which serves as the baseline. At the end of the second training session, a non-reinforcement phase constitutes a measure of acquisition. Infants are tested again after a delay of a few days or weeks during another non-reinforcement bout. The question then is whether infants remember how to make the train move. Findings dovetail with those reported for those obtained with the mobile conjugate reinforcement task: six month-old infants retain such knowledge for two weeks and 18 month-olds for up to three months. In a recent study, six month-old infants learnt the operant task and remembered how to do for two weeks thereafter, but moreover such experience mediated new learning of a modeling event remembered for one day and its recall. It was concluded that prior knowledge effects is not confined to adutls, but originates in early infancy.
See Mobile conjugate reinforcement, Operant (or instrumental) conditioning, Recall, Recall memory, Reinforcement schedule, Reinforcer, Sensory, ‘short-term’ (STM) and long-term (LTM) memory