What counts - you or me?

Babies remember what is important to others

To the point

• Key finding: Babies remember better what is important to others before they develop their own self-concept.
• Self-awareness: Babies who recognize themselves in the mirror remember their own objects better, while those who do not recognize themselves remember the doll's objects.
• Memory restructuring: In their second year, babies undergo a change in memory that enables them to focus on information that is relevant to themselves.
• Learning strategy: Younger babies show a preference for information about others, reflecting their dependence on observation and learning from others.

The researchers showed 18-months-old infants new objects that were either assigned to themselves or to another actor and then carried out a memory test. Infants were told that they would later be able to play with the objects assigned to them. The ‘other actor’ was a doll that the babies learnt would be able to play with the objects assigned to it. Before they could play with the objects,infants’ memory of the objects was tested. The researchers  hypothesized that babies would begin to remember their own objects better than the others only once their self-concept had developed.

‘Self-recognition in the mirror served as an index for the development of the self-concept,’ Charlotte Grosse Wiesmann explains the experiment. "Infants who recognised themselves in the mirror remembered objects assigned to themselves better than those assigned to others. Surprisingly, in contrast, non-self-recognisers only remembered the objects that were assigned to the other person, i.e. the doll. This indicates that the self-reference effect emerges with the development of the self-concept in the second year of life."

Remodelling of the baby's memory

At this age, a remodelling of the baby's memory seems to take place, which enables children to remember things better that are relevant to themselves. However, the researchers also came to another important conclusion in their study: "Surprisingly, we found that younger babies are better at remembering what was given to the other personand not themselves. This makes sense as young babies are not yet able to act independently so much, but rather observe others and learn from them. They are very dependent on others.  Therefore, they may prioritise others and remember things that are important to the other person. This appears to be a learning strategy about the world."