Infant Perceptual and Cognitive Development

Scott P. Johnson

Department of Psychology Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences

UCLA Los Angeles, California, USA

Infant Perceptual and Cognitive Development

TEX 2016 (Language Learning), SISSA, Trieste

I am a developmental psychologist

why study infants?

setting the stage

the population motorically, cognitively, & cortically challenged

their task disambiguate the physical & social world

their tools sensory systems exploratory systems (oculomotor, manual, mobile...) learning systems biases in attention curiosity

time to learn by 7 months postconception, a functional auditory system by 2 months postnatal, > 200 hours visual experience,

~2,500,000 eye movements by 3 years postnatal, a lexicon, semantics, syntax,

pragmatics, gestures, expression...

the question how do developing sensory, exploratory, & learning

systems lead to knowledge?

outline for the talk

infant testing methods visual attention pacifier sucking conditioned head turn violation of expectation habituation eye tracking ERPs fMRI & fNIRS

developmental processes & mechanisms nature vs. nurture learning indirectly I: attention learning indirectly II: sitting learning indirectly III: association perceptual narrowing/critical periods

More learning tomorrow

testing infants presents interesting challenges

infant testing methods

The embryology of behavior (Gesell, 1945)

“ocular attitudes” “mastery of tools”reciprocal eye/head/hand

control

2-13 days birth-3 years 13 days-24 weeks



visual attention

Fantz (1965)

Fantz (1963)

Fantz (1966)

Johnson et al. (1991)


pacifier sucking


conditioned head turn

Werker (2003)


violation of expectation

Wynn (1992)


habituation

Habituation Trials 1) 47.6 seconds…

5) 13.9 seconds 6) 6.7 seconds 7) 3.6 seconds

Test Trials 1) Structured: 4.6 seconds 2) Random: 14.2 seconds 3) Structured: 4.4 seconds 4) Random…

Kirkham, Slemmer, & Johnson (2002)


habituation

Kirkham, Slemmer, & Johnson (2002)


eye tracking

Tobii (model 1750) remote optics system

(2003)

ASL (model 504) remote optics system

(1997)

SR Research (EyeLink 1000) remote optics system

(1997)


eye tracking

Frank, Vul, & Johnson (2009) Johnson, Davidow, Hall-Haro, & Frank (2008)


eye tracking

Frank, Vul, & Johnson (2009)


eye tracking

Three more points: • “It is no exaggeration to say that without looking time measures, we would know very little about nearly any aspect of infant development” (Aslin, 2007, p. 48)

• What develops are the “control systems,” not the oculomotor musculature (e.g., a shift from subcortical to cortical control; M. Johnson, 1990)

• If there is a shift from subcortical to cortical control, this would predict a shift in behavior, from reflexive to volitional responding

attention to “shiny things” --> attention to “meaningful things” low-level salience --> collections of features with semantic content


event-related potentials (ERPs)

Mills et al. (2004)


fMRI & fNIRS

Aslin, Shukla, & Emberson (2014)

developmental processes & mechanisms

nature vs. nurture

René Descartes (1596-1650) David Hume (1711-1776)

nature

Plato Aristotle

nativism (rationalism)

genetic

domain-specific

symbols + rules

nurture

empiricism

environmental

domain-general

associations


learning indirectly I: attention


Why?

• acuity

• intersensory synchrony

• cartoon stimulus

• faces as social information source

• mechanisms of attentional control



A new study in three parts:

• visual search (VS)

• Charlie Brown (CB)

• Sesame Street (SS)

Design:

• 17 3-mo, 14 6-mo, 14 9-mo

• 48 trials of VS, max 4 s each

• 4 min CB, 4 min SS

Measures:

• RT & accuracy for VS

• % face looking for CB & SS

• cross-task correlations

Questions:

• similar attention to faces in CB & SS?

• mediated by VS performance?

orientation motion



Frank, Amso, & Johnson (2014)

orientation motion


A new study in three parts:

• visual search (VS)

• Charlie Brown (CB)

• Sesame Street (SS)

Design:

• 17 3-mo, 14 6-mo, 14 9-mo

• 48 trials of VS, max 4 s each

• 4 min CB, 4 min SS

Measures:

• RT & accuracy for VS

• % face looking for CB & SS

• cross-task correlations

Questions:

• similar attention to faces in CB & SS?

• mediated by VS performance?



0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1

2 4 6 8 10 A

ccu

racy

Age (months)

Visual Search Accuracy

motion orientation

0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

0.6

0.7

0.8

0.9

2 4 6 8 10

Pro

po

rtio

n lo

okin

g

Age (months)

Face Looking

Charlie Brown Sesame Street

p < .05

p < .05

p < .01




looking at faces is mediated by selective attention

0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0

0.0

0.2

0.4

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Face Looking by Moving Search Accuracy

Accuracy

Pro

porti

on L

ooki

ng

3 months6 months9 months

500 1000 1500 2000 2500

0.0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1.0

Face Looking by Moving Search RT

Reaction Time (ms)

Pro

porti

on L

ooki

ngage (mos) face looking

search accuracy

.060, p < .001 .27, p < .001

.019, p < .01

.006, ns





learning indirectly II: sitting

Soska & Johnson (2008)

following habituation:

6-month-olds prefer incomplete (3D object completion)

4-month-olds: no preference

28 infants, 4.5 to 7.5 months (M age = 6 months)

habituation task • replicate Soska & Johnson (2008)

motor skills assessment

• onset of sitting from parental report

• structured play session in the lab

Soska, Adolph, & Johnson (2010)



structured play session

• infants sat (supported) on floor • offered toys

• allowed 60 s to play

coded drops, rotations, fingering, transfers and looking at toys




multimodal experience:

manual examination + looking




regression on posthabituation preference for incomplete (viz., our measure of 3D object completion)


3D object completion is mediated by self-sitting



Johnson, Amso, & Slemmer (2003)


learning indirectly III: association


Ball approaches occluder

Ball is fully occluded

Ball begins to emerge

Ball is again fully visible




“Training”

first...

4 trials, 30 s each 4 trials, 30 s each

then...




Ball approaches occluder

Ball is fully occluded

Ball begins to emerge

Ball is again fully visible



Kuhl (2004)


perceptual narrowing/critical periods

Kuhl (2004)



Werker (2003)



LeGrand et al. (2001)

Sinha (2013)



Contrast sensitivity



Kalia et al. (2014)



LeGrand et al. (2001)

controls: good

cataract patients: poor

controls: good

cataract patients: good

Infant Perceptual and Cognitive Development

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