Effects of Age, Experience, and Malnourishment on Object Retention in Learning Set

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Abstract
Repeated presentation of 100 6-trial problems produced significant retention of individual object discriminations in both 25-mo.-old and 6-mo.-old infant monkeys. The amount retained was a function of amount learned in any one sequence and was independent of age and experience. Deprivation in the form of malnutrition of 6-mo.-old monkeys produced superior performance in intraproblem learning and subsequent retention, but the retention loss remained constant. A 3-mo. retention interval produced a reduction in retention of individual items in the 25-mo.-old Ss but not in the younger animals. Return to a normal diet resulted in a decrease in performance, a return to performance normal for 6-mo.-olds after a 3-mo. interval. It appears that retention loss and the superior performance of the deprived group can be traced to changes in stimulus-preference error. The results are consistent with experiments using short memory intervals.