How is habituation used to test how much infants know?

• A. Infants imitate adults to show memory
• B. Infants attend longer to familiar stimuli
• C. Infants attend longer to stimuli they perceive as new
• D. Infants respond to caregiver voice

Answer: (C)

Habituation tests memory and recognition by looking at how infants’ attention changes as things become familiar. When a baby is shown the same stimulus repeatedly, their looking time drops because the stimulus is no longer new. If you then present a new stimulus and the infant looks longer, it shows they notice the difference and remember the old one. This longer attention to the new thing reveals that they know what was familiar before and can discriminate it from something novel. So, infants attend longer to stimuli they perceive as new.

The other ideas don’t fit as well because imitation reflects copying behavior rather than recognizing novelty, paying more attention to familiar stimuli goes against the habituation pattern (attention typically declines with familiarity), and responding to a caregiver’s voice is about social responsiveness rather than testing memory for a specific stimulus.