1-033 - Feedback learning in the early years and how it relates to other cognitive abilities

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Learning from feedback is of great importance in daily life and intensively studied from late childhood to adulthood (e.g., Crone et al., 2008). Recent theoretical frameworks suggest that even in infancy using the consequences of behavior to adjust one’s actions is crucial in order to adapt to a specific environment (Clark, 2013). Less is known, however, about the way feedback processing develops during the early years. In fact, most experimental cognitive learning paradigms in infancy and early childhood are not based on providing explicit forms of feedback (Mareschal & Quinn, 2001; Zelazo, 2006).

The present symposium will discuss feedback learning in infancy and early childhood. There are two main questions in the presented studies: 1) What factors influence the effectiveness of feedback processing? 2) How is feedback processing related to other cognitive abilities? The first presentation will discuss eye-tracking and EEG studies with a movement-contingent design in which the infants’ movements triggered visual feedback on the screen. The results show that indeed 3-month-old infants predict a self-induced effect on the screen. The second presentation will discuss a toddler study investigating the effectiveness of feedback in a hypothesis-testing task. Cognitive flexibility was the most crucial factor in feedback processing for toddlers. The third presentation will discuss a multimodal categorization task (5, 7, 10 years olds). The results suggest that the usefulness of multimodal feedback significantly changes across the early years. The authors will all present their views on how to make feedback learning in the early years a substantive research area.

Sub Unit

• Cognitive Processes

Chair

• Maartje Raijmakers, University of Amsterdam

Individual Presentations

• The early development of agency: How infants process and predict the sensory feedback of their actions - Presenting Author: Marlene Meyer, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour; Sabine Hunnius, University of Nijmegen

• What is important for feedback learning in preschoolers - Presenting Author: Maartje Raijmakers, University of Amsterdam; Bianca van Bers, University of Amsterdam

• The usefulness of feedback across childhood: A multisensory cueing paradigm - Presenting Author: Natasha Kirkham, Birkbeck, University of London; Denis Mareschal, Birkbeck University of London