Understanding the effects of one’s actions upon hidden objects and the development of search behaviour in 7-month-old infants

Infants' understanding of how their actions affect the visibility of hidden objects may be a crucial aspect of the development of search behaviour. To investigate this possibility, 7-month-old infants took part in a two-day training study. At the start of the first session, and at the end of the second, all infants performed a search task with a hiding-well. On both days, infants had an additional training experience. The ‘Agency group’ learnt to spin a turntable to reveal a hidden toy, whilst the ‘Means-End’ group learnt the same means-end motor action, but the toy was always visible. The Agency group showed greater improvement on the hiding-well search task following their training experience. We suggest that the Agency group's turntable experience was effective because it provided the experience of bringing objects back into visibility by one's actions. Further, the performance of the Agency group demonstrates generalized transfer of learning across situations with both different motor actions and stimuli in infants as young as 7 months

Impaired identification of impoverished animate but not inanimate objects in adults with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder

The ability to identify animate and inanimate objects from impoverished images was investigated in adults with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder (HFA) and in matched typically developed (TD) adults, using a newly developed task. Consecutive frames were presented containing Gabor elements that slightly changed orientation from one frame to the next. For a subset of elements, the changes were such that these elements gradually formed the outline of an object. Elements enclosed within the object's outline gradually adopted one and the same orientation, outside elements adopted random orientations. The subjective experience was that of an object appearing out of a fog. The HFA group required significantly more frames to identify the impoverished objects than the TD group. Crucially, this difference depended on the nature of the objects: the HFA group required significantly more frames to identify animate objects, but with respect to the identification of inanimate objects the groups did not differ. The groups also did not differ with respect to the number and type of incorrect guesses they made. The results suggest a specific impairment in individuals with HFA in identifying animate objects. A number of possible explanations are discussed

Labels direct infants’ attention to commonalities during novel category learning

Recent studies have provided evidence that labeling can influence the outcome of infants’ visual categorization. However, what exactly happens during learning remains unclear. Using eye-tracking, we examined infants’ attention to object parts during learning. Our analysis of looking behaviors during learning provide insights going beyond merely observing the learning outcome. Both labeling and non-labeling phrases facilitated category formation in 12-month-olds but not 8-month-olds (Experiment 1). Non-linguistic sounds did not produce this effect (Experiment 2). Detailed analyses of infants’ looking patterns during learning revealed that only infants who heard labels exhibited a rapid focus on the object part successive exemplars had in common. Although other linguistic stimuli may also be beneficial for learning, it is therefore concluded that labels have a unique impact on categorization

Child categorization

Categorization is a process that spans all of development, beginning in earliest infancy yet changing as children's knowledge and cognitive skills develop. In this review article, we address three core issues regarding childhood categorization. First, we discuss the extent to which early categories are rooted in perceptual similarity versus knowledge-enriched theories. We argue for a composite perspective in which categories are steeped in commonsense theories from a young age but also are informed by low-level similarity and associative learning cues. Second, we examine the role of language in early categorization. We review evidence to suggest that language is a powerful means of expressing, communicating, shaping, and supporting category knowledge. Finally, we consider categories in context. We discuss sources of variability and flexibility in children's categories, as well as the ways in which children's categories are used within larger knowledge systems (e.g., to form analogies, make inferences, or construct theories). Categorization is a process that is intrinsically tied to nearly all aspects of cognition, and its study provides insight into cognitive development, broadly construed. WIREs Cogn Sci 2011 2 95–105 DOI: 10.1002/wcs.96 For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs websitePeer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/78491/1/96_ftp.pd

Cross-Cultural Similarities and Differences in Person-Body Reasoning: Experimental Evidence From the United Kingdom and Brazilian Amazon

We report the results of a cross‐cultural investigation of person‐body reasoning in the United Kingdom and northern Brazilian Amazon (Marajó Island). The study provides evidence that directly bears upon divergent theoretical claims in cognitive psychology and anthropology, respectively, on the cognitive origins and cross‐cultural incidence of mind‐body dualism. In a novel reasoning task, we found that participants across the two sample populations parsed a wide range of capacities similarly in terms of the capacities’ perceived anchoring to bodily function. Patterns of reasoning concerning the respective roles of physical and biological properties in sustaining various capacities did vary between sample populations, however. Further, the data challenge prior ad‐hoc categorizations in the empirical literature on the developmental origins of and cognitive constraints on psycho‐physical reasoning (e.g., in afterlife concepts). We suggest cross‐culturally validated categories of “Body Dependent” and “Body Independent” items for future developmental and cross‐cultural research in this emerging area

Rethinking ‘Rational Imitation’ in 14-Month-Old Infants: A Perceptual Distraction Approach

In their widely noticed study, Gergely, Bekkering, and Király (2002) showed that 14-month-old infants imitated an unusual action only if the model freely chose to perform this action and not if the choice of the action could be ascribed to external constraints. They attributed this kind of selective imitation to the infants' capacity of understanding the principle of rational action. In the current paper, we present evidence that a simpler approach of perceptual distraction may be more appropriate to explain their results. When we manipulated the saliency of context stimuli in the two original conditions, the results were exactly opposite to what rational imitation predicts. Based on these findings, we reject the claim that the notion of rational action plays a key role in selective imitation in 14-month-olds

How infants and young children learn about food: a systematic review

Early childhood is a critical time for establishing food preferences and dietary habits. In order for appropriate advice to be available to parents and healthcare professionals it is essential for researchers to understand the ways in which children learn about foods. This review summarizes the literature relating to the role played by known developmental learning processes in the establishment of early eating behavior, food preferences and general knowledge about food, and identifies gaps in our knowledge that remain to be explored. A systematic literature search identified 48 papers exploring how young children learn about food from the start of complementary feeding to 36 months of age. The majority of the papers focus on evaluative components of children’s learning about food, such as their food preferences, liking and acceptance. A smaller number of papers focus on other aspects of what and how children learn about food, such as a food’s origins or appropriate eating contexts. The review identified papers relating to four developmental learning processes: 1. Familiarization to a food through repeated exposure to its taste, texture or appearance. This was found to be an effective technique for learning about foods, especially for children at the younger end of our age range. 2. Observational learning of food choice. Imitation of others’ eating behavior was also found to play an important role in the first years of life. 3. Associative learning through flavor-nutrient and flavor-flavor learning. Although the subject of much investigation, conditioning techniques were not found to play a major role in shaping the food preferences of infants in the post-weaning and toddler periods. 4. Categorization of foods. The direct effects of the ability to categorize foods have been little studied in this age group. However, the literature suggests that what infants are willing to consume depends on their ability to recognize items on their plate as familiar exemplars of that food type

Long-term associative learning predicts verbal short-term memory performance

Studies using tests such as digit span and nonword repetition have implicated short-term memory across a range of developmental domains. Such tests ostensibly assess specialized processes for the short-term manipulation and maintenance of information that are often argued to enable long-term learning. However, there is considerable evidence for an influence of long-term linguistic learning on performance in short-term memory tasks that brings into question the role of a specialized short-term memory system separate from long-term knowledge. Using natural language corpora, we show experimentally and computationally that performance on three widely used measures of short-term memory (digit span, nonword repetition, and sentence recall) can be predicted from simple associative learning operating on the linguistic environment to which a typical child may have been exposed. The findings support the broad view that short-term verbal memory performance reflects the application of long-term language knowledge to the experimental setting

The Novel Object and Unusual Name (NOUN) database: a collection of novel images for use in experimental research

Many experimental research designs require images of novel objects. Here we introduce the Novel Object and Unusual Name (NOUN) Database. This database contains 64 primary novel object images and additional novel exemplars for ten basic- and nine global-level object categories. The objects’ novelty was confirmed by both self-report and a lack of consensus on questions that required participants to name and identify the objects. We also found that object novelty correlated with qualifying naming responses pertaining to the objects’ colors. Results from a similarity sorting task (and subsequent multidimensional scaling analysis on the similarity ratings) demonstrated that the objects are complex and distinct entities that vary along several featural dimensions beyond simply shape and color. A final experiment confirmed that additional item exemplars comprise both sub- and superordinate categories. These images may be useful in a variety of settings, particularly for developmental psychology and other research in language, categorization, perception, visual memory and related domains