Infant Learning

Question 1

ways humans learn

Answer 1

• Social/observational learning: watching older, wiser con-specifics engaging in behaviours and imitate them
• Episodic learning; as we’re exposed to stimulus, we understand more about that stimulus and what’s associated with it
• Rational learning: understanding the material and the relationship to its components
• Classical or operant conditioning: learning to associate behaviours and situations…*
• Memorization: rote learning

Question 2

6 types of infant learning

Answer 2

• associative
• statistical
• classical conditioning
• operant conditioning
• imitation
• rational learning

Question 3

associative learning

Answer 3

• Infants learn by picking out regularities in their environment
• The association between 2 events is learned over time
• Infants learn to associate the sound of a dog barking with the sight of the dog
• Intermodal matching (eg. Visual correlates of auditory stimuli; gustatory correlates of visual stimuli -> ex. After tasting enough cookies, we can predict what a cookie will taste like based on how it looks)
• Some parts of intermodal matching may be innate
• Ex. Nubby vs. Smooth teether study: babies looked longer at the picture of whichever toy was put in their mouth even though they hadn’t seen it before

Question 4

statistical learning

Answer 4

• Learning the order in which stimuli occur -> detecting statistical predictable patterns in stimuli
• Ex. Learning that when people put on shoes, they then go outside
• This kind of learning can be powerful -> can help us learn about speech, music, and visual perception
• ex. Word segmentation

Question 5

word segmentation

Answer 5

• how babies figure out the individual words in a string of speech
• Babies keep track of how often sounds are paired together in order to figure out individual words
• Ex. “Pretty baby” -> The probability of “tty” coming after “pre” to make the word “pretty” is higher than the probability of “ba” coming after “tty” to make “ttyba”
• Ex. Monotone sounds demo: babies looked longer at words they hadn’t heard very often in the jumbled up sounds, and not as long at words that they’d heard often in the sounds
• Babies are much better at this than adults -> statistical learning is better, possibly because they have less cognitive functions to access, therefore less distractions

Question 6

classical conditioning

Answer 6

• Learning to associate a neutral stimulus with a stimulus that evokes a certain response
• Unconditioned stimulus = naturally produces a response (unconditioned response)
• Conditioned stimulus = stimulus that gets paired with unconditioned stimulus to eventually elicit the same response by itself (conditioned response)
• Classical condition in infancy
• Citrus scent can be conditioned to elicit head turns in 30-day-olds
• US = face massage, UR/CR = head turn, CS = citrus scent

Question 7

operant/instrumental conditioning

Answer 7

• Learning to associate one’s own behaviour with an elicited response -> ex. Mobile tied to baby’s foot, baby learns that moving will move mobile and create a pleasurable effect -> positive reinforcement
• Can be observed in neonates as well as older infants
• High-amplitude sucking procedure can be used to demonstrate operant conditioning
• Infants learn to suck harder.faster if it consistently produces a pleasurable sensation (ex. A fun noise)

Question 8

imitation

Answer 8

• Appears early on n birth, but unsure if innate
• One of the most powerful ways that infants learn is by imitating others
• Perhaps as early as immediately after birth
• However, newborns do not always imitate -> replications of newborn imitation studies have failed
• Same effect is quite robust by 6 months
• Infants can be picky about whom they imitate – either familiar (ex. Family, caregiver), ingroup (in this case, people who speak the same language)

Question 9

in-group out-group imitation study

Answer 9

• 14-month-old infants more faithfully imitate members of their in-group
• Condition 1: English-speaking babies were told stories in English, then watched the man turn on lamp using his head
• Condition 2: English-speaking babies were told stories in Spanish, then watched the man turn on lamp with his head
• Later on, when asked to “do what the man did”, they all imitated the **goal (all turned on the lamp), but only the babies who’d heard the English story (perceived the man as member of their in-group), imitated the **manner (using their head)

Question 10

who do children faithfully imitate as they get older?

Answer 10

People who are…

• More accurate
• More knowledgeable and confident
• Share arbitrary characteristics with them (eg. Same shirt colour)

Question 11

rational learning

Answer 11

• Adults use rational learning extensively -> Inference based on prior data, Understanding the relationships between the components of a scene/stimulus
• Infants to seem to have access to rational learning
• Infants are surprised when expectations are violated

Question 12

violation of expectation paradigm: ball study

Answer 12

• Red and white ball example: infants see a clear box full of red balls with some white ones, then close the lid so that the infant can’t see inside anymore
• Researchers then reach inside and pull out a few balls -> infants looked longer when the experimenter removed white balls because they weren’t expecting white balls to come out since there were so many red balls
• If red balls are pulled out, infants eventually habituate