3 aspects of attention
orienting, selecting, maintaining
orienting
directing attention to specific objects or locations. attention getting
- newborns do this; improves over infancy
selecting
focus on some things; filter out others
- present early; improves over infancy
maintaining
continuing to attend despite potential distractions. attention holding
- considerable development over infancy and beyond
disengagement
selective attention
selective attention in US vs China
objects (US) vs. actions (china) @ age 2
before and after 6 months maintaining attention
before: younger look longer at same stimulus than older
after: look longer at more complex objects
SES vs. maintaining attention
episodic memories
childhood amnesia
infants before age 3 or 4 find it hard to keep memories long-term (if they do, may actually be due to stories you’ve heard)
how to study memory in infancy
habituation, visual recognition memory, operant conditioning, and deferred imitation
habituation
visual recognition memory
operant conditioning
baby causes outcome via operand
- insert delay –> do they remember it?
- 6 mos retain for 2 weeks, 18 mos retain for 3 mos
deferred imitation
do novel thing a baby can’t do, after how long do they still reproduce action?
3 principles of infant memory
mobile/train studies
when do babies start to show more context-insensitivity?
after 12 mos
memory is better when:
individual differences in memory
categorization
responding to different entities that share some commonality as members of the same category
concept
mental representation of a category
how are categories useful?
we don’t have to learn new info about every new exemplar; frees up cognitive resources to do other stuff