Infant Cognitive Development Concepts PDF

**Glossary of Key Terms** **[Visual Memory & Attention]** - **Visual Habituation:** The decrease in an infant\'s looking time at a repeatedly presented stimulus, indicating recognition. - **Infant Control Procedure (ICP):** A research method where the infant controls the duration of s...

**Glossary of Key Terms** **[Visual Memory & Attention]** - **Visual Habituation:** The decrease in an infant\'s looking time at a repeatedly presented stimulus, indicating recognition. - **Infant Control Procedure (ICP):** A research method where the infant controls the duration of stimulus exposure, allowing for accurate assessment of habituation. - **Comparator Model:** A theoretical model that proposes the brain compares incoming stimuli to existing mental representations, leading to habituation or orienting responses. - **Speed of Processing Hypothesis:** The idea that infants with shorter looking times process information more quickly. - **Disengagement Hypothesis:** The idea that infants with shorter looking times are faster at disengaging their attention from stimuli. - **Sustained Attention:** A phase of visual attention characterized by focused attention on a stimulus, often accompanied by heart rate deceleration. - **Attention Termination:** A phase of visual attention where the infant disengages from the stimulus, often accompanied by heart rate recovery. - **RFN Model (Random-Familiar-Novel):** A model that describes the sequence of infant preferences during visual habituation, starting with random preference, then familiarity preference, and finally novelty preference. - **Goldilocks Effect:** The tendency for infants to prefer stimuli of moderate complexity and predictability, avoiding those that are too simple or too complex. - **Familiarity Preference:** The tendency for infants to show increased attention to partially familiar stimuli, which may facilitate learning and memory consolidation. **[The object concept]** - **Object Permanence:** The understanding that objects continue to exist even when they are out of sight. This concept is central to Piaget\'s theory of cognitive development. - **Symbolic Representation:** The ability to mentally represent objects and events that are not physically present. According to Piaget, this ability develops around 18 months of age. - **A-not-B Error:** A classic error made by infants during the object permanence task. Infants between 8-12 months will continue to search for an object in the location where they last found it (location A) even after they have seen it hidden in a new location (location B). This error suggests that infants at this age still link the object to their action of retrieving it from location A. - **Violation-of-Expectation (VoE) Paradigm:** A research method used to study infant cognition. Infants are shown events that are either physically possible or impossible. Longer looking times at impossible events suggest that infants have an understanding of the physical principle being violated and can form mental representations. - **Solidity:** The principle that two solid objects cannot occupy the same space. - **Continuity:** The principle that an object traces exactly one connected path over space and time. - **Event Categories:** Infants organize their understanding of the physical world into categories of events, such as occlusion, containment, collision, and support. - **Support Events:** Events involving an object being supported by another object. Infants develop an understanding of support gradually, starting with an all-or-none concept of contact. - **Physical Reasoning System (PRS):** An innate system that provides infants with a causal framework for understanding physical events. The PRS allows infants to form expectations about the outcomes of events. - **Contrastive Learning:** A type of learning in which infants compare the effects of different values of a variable. For example, infants may learn about the importance of height by observing that objects shorter than an occluder are hidden, while objects taller than the occluder are visible. - **Priming:** A technique in which infants are exposed to a particular event that highlights a specific variable. This exposure can help infants to identify the variable as relevant and to include it in their representations of similar events. - **Encoding:** The process of creating a mental representation of an event. - **Retrieval:** The process of accessing information that has been encoded in memory. **[VoE paradigm]** **Violation of Expectation (VoE):** A research paradigm that assesses infant cognition by measuring looking times at events that either conform to or violate their expectations about the physical world. **Habituation/Familiarization:** The process of repeatedly presenting an infant with a stimulus until their looking time decreases, indicating a decrease in interest or attention. **Test Events:** In VoE studies, the events presented after habituation that either adhere to (possible event) or violate (impossible event) a physical principle. **Looking Time:** The amount of time an infant spends looking at a particular stimulus, used as a measure of attention and interest. **Perceptual Factors:** Visual characteristics of stimuli, such as novelty, complexity, and movement, that can influence infants\' looking times independently of their understanding of the events. **Rich Interpretation:** The tendency to attribute complex cognitive abilities, such as reasoning, belief, and surprise, to infants based solely on their looking time data in VoE studies. **Control Conditions:** Conditions designed to rule out alternative explanations for observed looking-time differences by ensuring that possible and impossible events share key perceptual features. **Manual Search Task:** A task in which infants are required to physically search for a hidden object, providing a more active measure of their understanding of object permanence. **Pupil Dilation:** The widening of the pupils in response to stimuli, often used as a physiological indicator of surprise or interest. **Social Looking:** An infant\'s tendency to look at their caregiver in response to an unexpected or ambiguous event, potentially seeking information or reassurance. **[Number Concepts & Arithmetic]** Here are some key terms and concepts found in the sources: - **Analog-Magnitude Mechanism:** This mechanism is used by infants to discriminate large sets of objects (greater than 4). It is based on the proportionate difference between sets, meaning that it is easier to discriminate between sets with a larger ratio difference (e.g., 8 vs. 16) than those with a smaller ratio difference (e.g., 16 vs. 24). This mechanism is also used for other dimensions like size, area, and duration. Studies suggest this mechanism operates from birth. - **Object Tracking System:** This system is used by infants to track a small number of objects (1-3, occasionally 4). The complexity of the objects can affect the number of objects that can be tracked. - **Habituation:** This is a technique used in infant studies where a stimulus is repeatedly presented until the infant\'s looking time decreases, indicating that they have become familiar with it. A new stimulus is then presented, and if the infant looks longer at the new stimulus, it suggests that they can discriminate between the two stimuli. - **Object Files:** This is a theoretical concept used to explain how infants track objects. Each object file stores information about a single object, such as location, size, motion, and color. Infants search for visible objects that match the object files in their memory. When there is a mismatch, infants continue searching, resulting in longer looking times. This is suggested as an alternative explanation for infants\' performance on arithmetic tasks, proposing that they are simply keeping track of objects rather than performing calculations. - **SNARC Effect:** This stands for Spatial-Numerical Association of Response Codes. In adults, responses involving small numbers are faster with the left hand, while responses involving large numbers are faster with the right hand. This effect is also observed in infants, suggesting an innate ability to discriminate between small and large numbers and a sense of ordinal size (understanding which number is smaller or larger). - **Violation-of-Expectation (VoE) Paradigm:** This is a research method used to study infant cognition. It involves presenting infants with events that either violate or conform to their expectations. If infants look longer at the unexpected event, it suggests that they have an understanding of the underlying principle being violated. The sources include suggested reading for further exploration of the VoE paradigm. **[Late Search & Graded representations]** Here are some important terms and concepts from the sources you provided: - **Means-End Problem Solving:** This refers to the ability to execute a series of steps to achieve a goal. Search behavior in infants is considered an example of means-end problem solving. - **Late Search:** This term describes the phenomenon where infants, despite understanding that hidden objects continue to exist (object permanence), only begin to actively search for them around 8 months of age. The sources explore various explanations for this delay. - **Intentional Search:** Search behavior is deemed intentional when the infant exhibits clear signs of purposefulness, such as maintaining focus on the hidden object and deliberately removing obstacles to retrieve it. Before 8 months, infants might interact with covers or objects in a way that suggests an understanding of the hidden object, but not necessarily a deliberate attempt to retrieve it. This is termed **transitional behavior**. - **Deficit/Interference Explanations:** These are theories that attempt to explain late search by proposing factors that either hinder the infant\'s ability to search or interfere with their understanding of the task. Examples of such explanations include: - **Inadequate manual skill**: This theory suggests that infants lack the necessary motor skills to successfully search for hidden objects. This is quickly ruled out as infants at this age possess sufficient grasping and lifting ability. - **Interference from visually guided reaching**: This theory, proposed by Bushnell, posits that the attentional demands of visually guided reaching, which peaks around 7-8 months, might cause infants to forget or ignore the hidden object. However, intentional search emerges around the same time, contradicting this theory. - **Development of prefrontal cortex**: Diamond suggests that the slow development of the prefrontal cortex, responsible for inhibiting impulsive actions and planning, might explain late search. Infants might grasp the cover but then automatically play with it instead of focusing on the hidden object. While a compelling idea, there is no direct evidence to support this claim. - **Goal-subgoal conflict:** Baillargeon\'s hypothesis argues that infants experience a conflict between wanting the hidden object (goal) and not wanting to interact with the cover (subgoal). This conflict allegedly prevents them from successfully searching. However, studies have shown that infants do reach for the cover, and modifying the task to minimize the conflict did not improve their performance. - **Lack of knowledge about means-end relations:** This explanation proposes that infants might not understand the cause-and-effect relationship between removing the cover and revealing the hidden object. They might know where the object is and have a goal to retrieve it, but lack the understanding that their actions can lead to the desired outcome. - **Graded Representations:** This hypothesis, put forward by Munakata, challenges the \"all-or-none\" concept of object permanence. It suggests that infants\' internal representations of hidden objects strengthen gradually with experience. Weaker representations might suffice for perceptual tasks, while stronger ones are needed to guide actions like reaching and searching. - **Action Production vs. Action Perception:** The sources highlight that infants might demonstrate an understanding of means-end relationships in perceptual tasks before they can execute the same actions themselves. For example, 6-month-old infants could recognize a correct means-end sequence but struggled to perform the same sequence when asked to retrieve a hidden object.