Carolyn Rovee-Collier-Baby Memory

Carolyn Rovee-Collier was the name that peaked my curiosity from the list. Reading through her obituary on Rutgers website, she seemed to be an amazing woman.  She received her undergrad degree from Louisiana State University and then was accepted into a male dominated institution-Brown’s University, from which she received her Ph.D.  She was writing her thesis when she had an experience that launched her career.  Any mom knows that when she is trying to focus on something, having to redirect to quiet a fussy baby is not always fun.  While writing, she would have to restart the mobile to keep baby happy when it would stop.   She tied a ribbon on his leg so that when he kicked, the mobile would move.   She started to notice that he would kick when she would lay him down, noticing that he would remember that if he kicked the mobile would move.  While teaching at Rutgers, she led a team of students that became known as “the Baby Lab”, which studied baby’s memories and wrote/co-authored many published reports (Rutgers, 2014). 

                One of her published reports, “The Development of Infant Memory” outlined and presented information about a study she conducted.  She used two different age groups with two different tasks to show that infants do in fact have memory.  The task observed for 2 to 6-month old’s had to do with the ribbon and the leg trick. The task for 6 to 18-month-old the kiddos would move the train around the track by pushing down a button.  She even tested the memory retention through adding changes such as a new mobile or train and demonstrated that they will do the same movement (kick to move a mobile) in different places such as home vs daycare (Rovee-Collier, 1999).  She did show that retention decreases as time goes on if not reinforced…which is no different that what we as adults see as we prep for Anatomy tests. Review is key. 😊   

Rugers. (2014). Faculity Emerti;Carolyn Rovee-Collier in Memorandum.  https://psych.rutgers.edu/people/faculty/faculty-emeriti/496-obituary-for-carolyn-rovee-collier.  Accessed March 6^th, 2019 

Rovee-Collier, C. (1999). The Development of Infant Memory. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 8(3), 80–85. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8721.00019