Recognising and shaping opportunities for learning: neurocognitive insight into active learning in early infancy

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Abstract

In infancy, information available in the environment is complex and vast; to learn from this information, infants extract and assimilate its statistical properties (Kidd et al., 2012). Behavioural measures alone offer little insight into when, and why, infants are most receptive to receiving new information. What mechanisms underpin how infants actively acquire information? Do they recognise and shape opportunities for learning?

This interdisciplinary and international symposium brings together 4 papers using neurocognitive and behavioural techniques to address these questions in social and non-social contexts. All papers use EEG to provide high-time-resolution data about infants’ online information processing.

Papers 1 and 2 explore cognitive mechanisms supporting the acquisition of information in infancy. Measuring theta activity as an index of selective information encoding, Paper 1 shows that infants recognise and use opportunities for learning from causal structures in their environment. Providing a complimentary perspective, Paper 2 identifies individual differences in active visual processing, exploring infant gamma activity in response to repetitive screen-based stimuli.

Papers 3 and 4 investigate infants as shaping their learning. Critical to obtaining information from social partners, Paper 3 demonstrates individual differences in infant sensitivity to having their gaze followed. Offering an alternative view on active learning, Paper 4 shows that attentional processes are under exogenous influence during joint play; suggesting the importance of investigating mechanisms identified in Papers 1 and 2 in early interaction.

Together, these papers provide new insight into cognitive mechanisms involved in early learning, as well as conditions optimal for infants to acquire new information.

Sub Unit

• Attention, Learning, Memory

Chair

• Emily A M Phillips, University of East London

Individual Presentations

• Knowing when to learn. Infants’ sensitivity to confounded information in a causal reasoning task. - Presenting Author: Katarina Begus, Harvard University; Non-Presenting Author: Elizabeth Bonawitz, Rutgers University - Newark

• Infants’ processing of distractors is associated with group-coherent modulation of occipital gamma bursts - Presenting Author: Cecile Gal, Birkbeck University of London; Non-Presenting Author: Elena Piccardi, Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development, Birkbeck, University of London; Non-Presenting Author: Marie Smith, Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development, Birkbeck, University of London; Non-Presenting Author: Raul Muresan, Transylvanian Institute of Neuroscience; Non-Presenting Author: Teodora Gliga, University Of East Anglia

• Influence of early social interactions on a sensitivity to having one's own gaze followed - Presenting Author: Holly Rayson, Institut des Sciences Cognitives Marc Jeannerod, CNRS; Non-Presenting Author: James Bonaiuto, Institut des Sciences Cognitives-Marc Jeannerod, CNRS; Non-Presenting Author: Pier Ferrari, Institut des Sciences Cognitives-Marc Jeannerod, CNRS; Non-Presenting Author: Bhismadev Chakrabarti, University of Reading; Non-Presenting Author: Lynne Murray, University of Reading

• Infant attention is under exogenous influence in early social interaction - Presenting Author: Emily A M Phillips, University of East London; Non-Presenting Author: Megan Whitehorn, University of East London; Non-Presenting Author: Ira Marriott Haresign, University of East London; Non-Presenting Author: Victoria Leong, Nanyang Technological University; Non-Presenting Author: Sam V Wass, University of East London