Memory by association: Integrating memories prolongs retention by two-year-olds

•Research with human infants has shown that some memory tasks are remembered longer than others.•Two-year-olds exhibit retention in the visual recognition memory paradigm for 24 h, while they exhibit retention in the deferred imitation paradigm for at least 8 weeks.•We paired these tasks together during original encoding and tested infants in both tasks after an 8-week delay.•Two-year-olds exhibited retention in both tasks.•Retrieving the memory of a more memorable task cued retrieval of the less memorable task, extending its longevity.

Recalling one memory often leads to the recollection of other memories that share overlapping features. This phenomenon, spreading activation, was originally documented in studies conducted with verbal adults, and more recently, it has been demonstrated with preverbal infants. Here, we examine the effect of spreading activation on long-term retention by 2-year-olds. Participants were tested in the Visual Recognition Memory (VRM) paradigm and the deferred imitation paradigm. Typically, infants of this age exhibit retention in the VRM paradigm for 24 h, while they exhibit retention in the deferred imitation paradigm for at least 8 weeks. In the present experiment, we paired these tasks together during original encoding and tested infants after an 8-week delay. Two-year-olds exhibited retention in both tasks. That is, when these two tasks initially occurred together - one task that is extremely memorable and one that is not - retrieving the memory of the more memorable task cued retrieval of the less memorable task, extending its longevity.