We asked whether 11- and 14- month-old infants' abstract rule learning, an early form of analogical reasoning, is susceptible to processing constraints imposed by limits in attention and memory for sequence position. We examined 11- and 14- month-old infants' learning and generalization of abstract repetition rules ("repetition anywhere," Experiment 1 or "medial repetition," Experiment 2) and ordering of specific items (edge positions, Experiment 3) in 4-item sequences. Infants were habituated to sequences containing repetition- and/or position-based structure and then tested with "familiar" vs. "novel" (random) sequences composed of new items. Eleven-month-olds (N = 40) failed to learn abstract repetition rules, but 14-month-olds (N = 40) learned rules under both conditions. In Experiment 3, 11-month-olds (N = 20) learned item edge positions in sequences identical to those in Experiment 2. We conclude that infant sequence learning is constrained by item position in similar ways as in adults.

We examined mechanisms underlying infants’ ability to detect, extract, and generalize sequential patterns, focusing on how saliency and consistency of distributional information guide infant learning of the most “likely” pattern in audiovisual sequences. In Experiment 1, we asked if 11- and 14-month-old infants could learn a “repetition anywhere” rule (e.g., ABBC, AABC, ABCC). In Experiment 2 we asked if 11- and 14-month-olds could generalize a “medial repetition” rule when its position is consistent in sequence, and in Experiment 3 we asked if 11-month-olds could identify a nonadjacent dependency occurring at edge positions. Infants were first habituated to 4-item sequences (shapes + syllables) containing repetition- and/or position-based structure, and were then tested with “familiar” structure instantiated across new items or combinations of items vs. “novel” (random) sequences. We found that 11-month-olds failed to learn the repetition rule both when the structure appeared in initial, medial, or final position (Experiment 1) and when it was restricted to the medial position (Experiment 2). Fourteen- month-olds learned repetition rules under both conditions. Finally, in Experiment 3 11-month-olds succeeded in learning a nonadjacent dependency in sequences identical to those used to test repetition learning in Experiment 2. Our results suggest that infants at 11 months, like adults, are relatively insensitive to patterns in the middle of sequences.