The Memory We Miss: Exploratory Behavior as a Window into Developmental Recognition Processes
Abstract
Recognition memory tasks are among the most widely used approaches for studying learning and memory across the lifespan, yet the behavioral measures used to assess memory performance, particularly during developmental studies, remain limited. In most rodent studies, recognition memory is inferred almost exclusively from discrimination ratios or discrimination indices that quantify preferential exploration of novel stimuli. While these measures have proven valuable, their widespread use may constrain our understanding of the behavioral and cognitive processes that support nuanced memory expression across ontogeny. Similar concerns have emerged in the fear conditioning literature, where expanding analyses beyond freezing behavior has revealed previously unrecognized differences in learning and memory. In this perspective, we argue that recognition memory research would benefit from a comparable expansion of behavioral analyses. Drawing on affordance-based approaches to object exploration, we discuss evidence showing that object properties influence both memory performance and exploratory behavior. More importantly, our recent findings indicate that juvenile (but not adult) rats exhibit task-dependent shifts in exploratory behavior, contingent on the object's specific affordance, which are not captured by traditional discrimination measures. These findings suggest that developmental differences in memory may be expressed not only through recognition performance but also through the exploratory strategies animals employ during learning and retrieval. Expanding behavioral analyses in recognition memory tasks may therefore reveal developmental neurobehavioral mechanisms that remain hidden from conventional metrics, providing a more complete understanding of memory development. The challenge moving forward is not simply to determine whether young animals remember, but to identify how they remember and whether the behavioral routes to successful memory change across development.
Versions
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BibTeX
@misc{williamson2026memory,
title = {{The Memory We Miss: Exploratory Behavior as a Window into Developmental Recognition Processes}},
author = {Eleanor G. Williamson and Jesse Cushman and Patrese A. Robinson},
howpublished = {PsyArXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.31234/osf.io/b83p6_v2},
url = {https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/b83p6_v2/},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - The Memory We Miss: Exploratory Behavior as a Window into Developmental Recognition Processes
AU - Eleanor G. Williamson
AU - Jesse Cushman
AU - Patrese A. Robinson
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/13
PB - PsyArXiv
DO - 10.31234/osf.io/b83p6_v2
UR - https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/b83p6_v2/
AB - Recognition memory tasks are among the most widely used approaches for studying learning and memory across the lifespan, yet the behavioral measures used to assess memory performance, particularly during developmental studies, remain limited. In most rodent studies, recognition memory is inferred almost exclusively from discrimination ratios or discrimination indices that quantify preferential exploration of novel stimuli. While these measures have proven valuable, their widespread use may constrain our understanding of the behavioral and cognitive processes that support nuanced memory expression across ontogeny. Similar concerns have emerged in the fear conditioning literature, where expanding analyses beyond freezing behavior has revealed previously unrecognized differences in learning and memory. In this perspective, we argue that recognition memory research would benefit from a comparable expansion of behavioral analyses. Drawing on affordance-based approaches to object exploration, we discuss evidence showing that object properties influence both memory performance and exploratory behavior. More importantly, our recent findings indicate that juvenile (but not adult) rats exhibit task-dependent shifts in exploratory behavior, contingent on the object's specific affordance, which are not captured by traditional discrimination measures. These findings suggest that developmental differences in memory may be expressed not only through recognition performance but also through the exploratory strategies animals employ during learning and retrieval. Expanding behavioral analyses in recognition memory tasks may therefore reveal developmental neurobehavioral mechanisms that remain hidden from conventional metrics, providing a more complete understanding of memory development. The challenge moving forward is not simply to determine whether young animals remember, but to identify how they remember and whether the behavioral routes to successful memory change across development.
ER -