Infants' ability to parse continuous actions.

In a series of 3 experiments, the authors examined 6- and 8-month-old infants' capacities to detect target actions in a continuous action sequence. In Experiment 1, infants were habituated to 2 different target actions and subsequently were presented with 2 continuous action sequences that either included or did not include the familiar target actions. Infants looked significantly longer at the sequences that were novel. Experiment 2 presented the habituation and test trials in the reverse order. The results showed that infants habituated to the sequence still showed reliable evidence of recognizing the target action during the test trials. Experiment 3 was comparable to Experiment 2, except it tested whether infants could detect a different event segment, namely the transitions between events. The results showed that infants did not discriminate between test trials suggesting that transitions between events are not as easy for infants to recognize. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Precursors to the development of intention at 6 months: Understanding people and their actions.

Under investigation was whether 6-month-old infants expect people to behave differently toward persons and inanimate objects. Infants were randomly assigned to experimental and control conditions. In the experimental conditions, infants were habituated to an actor who either talked to or reached for and swiped with something hidden behind an occluder. In the test events the actor was occluded, but the infants were shown either a person or an object. In the control condition, infants only saw the person or object stimulus. Results showed that infants who had been habituated to an actor who was talking looked longer at the object, and infants who had been habituated to an actor who was reaching and swiping looked longer at the person. No difference in looking at the stimuli was observed in the control condition. This suggests that infants expect people's actions to be related to objects in ways that are continuous with more mature, intentional understandings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Absence of a Shape Bias in Children's Word Learning.

There is debate about whether preschool-age children interpret words as referring to kinds or to classes defined by shape similarity. The authors argue that the shape bias reported in previous studies is a task-induced artifact rather than a genuine word-learning strategy. In particular, children were forced to extend an object's novel label to one of several stand-alone, simple-shaped items, including a same-shape option from a different category and a different-shape option from the same superordinate category. Across 6 experiments, the authors found that the shape bias was eliminated (a) when the objects were more complex, (b) when they were presented in context, or (c) when children were no longer forced to choose. Moreover, children preferred the different-shape category alternatives when these were part of the same basic-level category as the target. The present experiments suggest that children seek out objects of the same kind when presented with a novel label, even if they are sometimes unable to identify the relevant kinds on their own. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Infants' responses to facial and vocal emotional signals in a social referencing paradigm

The independent effects of facial and vocal emotional signals and of positive and negative signals on infant behavior were investigated in a novel toy social referencing paradigm. 90 12-month-old infants and their mothers were assigned to an expression condition (neutral, happy, or fear) nested within a modality condition (face-only or voice-only). Each infant participated in 3 trials: a baseline trial, an expression trial, and a final positive trial. We found that fearful vocal emotional signals, when presented without facial signals, were sufficient to elicit appropriate behavior regulation. Infants in the fear-voice condition looked at their mothers longer, showed less toy proximity, and tended to show more negative affect than infants in the neutral-voice condition. Happy vocal signals did not elicit differential responding. The infants' sex was a factor in the few effects that were found for infants' responses to facial emotional signals.     

Do 9-month-old infants expect distinct words to refer to kinds?

In 3 experiments, 9-month-old infants' expectations for what distinct count noun labels refer to were investigated. In Experiment 1, a box was opened to reveal 2 objects inside during familiarization: either 2 identical objects or 2 different objects. Test trials followed the same procedure, except before the box was opened, the contents were described using 2 distinct labels ("I see a wug! I see a dak!") or the same label twice ("I see a zav! I see a zav!"). Infants who heard a label repeated twice looked longer at 2 different objects versus 2 identical objects, whereas infants who heard 2 distinct labels showed a different pattern of looking. Experiments 2 and 3 presented infants with object pairs that only differed in shape or color, and it was found that infants expected the different-shaped (but not the different-colored) objects to be labeled by distinct count nouns. Because the property of shape is a cue to kind membership and the property of color is not, these results suggest that even at the beginning of word learning, infants may expect distinct labels to refer to distinct kinds of objects. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Retrieval of a basic-level category in prelinguistic infants.

Two experiments using the habituation–dishabituation paradigm examined the 9-month-old infant's ability to form and retrieve a basic-level category (bird). Results indicated that infants categorized when tested immediately and after a 5-min delay. Maternal interviews indicated that infants had little or no prior exposure to the target category. The findings provide direct evidence for retrieval of a novel, basic-level category prior to understanding the corresponding word. Formation and retrieval of the category did not require an extended learning process but were achieved under the conditions of the experiment itself. Finally, formation of a nonlinguistic category was achieved without the use of function information. Contrary to some accounts of the formation of linguistic categories, this suggests that form information may be a sufficient basis for categorization in the nonlinguistic domain. Such differences further support the need to investigate the two domains independently. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Infant visual attentiveness in relation to birth condition.

28 preterm infants tested at 40 wks conceptional age showed significantly longer periods of attention to 2-dimensional stimuli than did 28 full-term infants of the same conceptional age (Exp I). To determine whether attentiveness of the full-term infants was diminished by transient birth effects, visual attentiveness was measured in a group of 15 full-term infants in the 1st 2 days of life and 2 wks later (Exp II). There was no significant increase in attention over this period. Furthermore, data from 62 additional preterm infants showed that fixation times were not significantly related to length of postnatal experience (Exp III). The only attention measure relating to birth condition was a measure of initial responsiveness. Healthier infants showed slightly longer first fixations on the first exposure of the stimulus. Initial responsiveness to visual stimuli may represent infant attentiveness more accurately than sustained attention to unchanging 2-dimensional stimuli. (17 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Infant-directed versus adult-directed speech as signals for faces.

The effectiveness of infant- and adult-directed (ID and AD) speech as signals for adult faces was studied. In the pairing phase of Exp 1, 4-mo-olds received 6 presentations of an ID or AD speech segment that either preceded (forward pairings) or followed (backward pairings) the presentation of a smiling face. In the summation test phase, infants received 4 novel checkerboard pattern presentations, 2 with and 2 without the speech segment. Only infants in the ID forward pairing condition exhibited significant positive summation. In Exp 2, the differences between ID and AD forward pairing groups were replicated with different speech exemplars. In Exp 3, an ID speech segment that was paired with a smiling or sad face elicited significant positive summation, while one paired with a fearful or angry face did not. These differences in visual responding were not accompanied by differences in infant facial affect. Ways in which ID speech may facilitate associative learning are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Infants' responses to their mothers' expressions of joy and sadness.

On separate visits to the laboratory, 36 nine-month-old infants (18 boys and 18 girls) watched their mothers express joy or sadness, facially and vocally, during a 2-min emotion-induction period. After the induction period, mothers continued to express joy or sadness while their infants played with four sets of toys. Infant emotion expressions were analyzed using the Max (Izard, 1979a) and Affex (Izard, Dougherty, & Hembree, 1983) coding systems, and infant play behavior was coded with a system developed by Belsky and Most (1981). The amount of time that the infants looked at their mothers was also measured. Findings were generally consistent with differential emotions theory (Izard, 1979b). The infants expressed more joy and looked longer at their mothers during the joy condition and they showed more sadness, anger, and gaze aversion during the sadness condition. The infants engaged in more play behavior in the joy condition than in the sadness condition. Regression analyses revealed several significant relations between infants' gaze behavior, emotion expressions, and play behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The importance of eyes: How infants interpret adult looking behavior.

Two studies assessed the gaze following of 12-, 14-, and 18-month-old infants. The experimental manipulation was whether an adult could see the targets. In Experiment 1, the adult turned to targets with either open or closed eyes. Infants at all ages looked at the adult's target more in the open- versus closed-eyes condition. In Experiment 2, an inanimate occluder, a blindfold, was compared with a headband control. Infants 14- and 18-months-old looked more at the adult's target in the headband condition. Infants were not simply responding to adult head turning, which was controlled, but were sensitive to the status of the adult's eyes. In the 2nd year, infants interpreted adult looking as object-directed--an act connecting the gazer and the object. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Development of three-dimensional form perception.

In 3 experiments with infants and one with adults we explored the generality, limitations, and informational bases of early form perception. In the infant studies we used a habituation-of-looking-time procedure and the method of Kellman (1984), in which responses to 3-dimensional (3-D) form were isolated by habituating 16-wk-old Ss to a single object in 2 different axes of rotation in depth, and testing afterward for dishabituation to the same object and to a different object in a novel axis of rotation. In Exp I, continuous optical transformations given by moving 16-wk-old observers around a stationary 3-D object specified 3-D form to infants. In Exp II, we found no evidence of 3-D form perception from multiple, stationary, binocular views of objects by 16- and 24-wk-olds. Exp IIIA indicated that perspective transformations of the bounding contours of an object, apart from surface information, can specify form at 16 wks. Exp IIIB provided a methodological check, showing that adult Ss could neither perceive 3-D forms from the static views of the objects in Exp IIIA nor match views of either object across different rotations by proximal stimulus similarities. The results identify continuous perspective transformations, given by object or observer movement, as the informational bases of early 3-D form perception. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Do gender labels yield sex differences in performance, or is label a fable?

Replicated R. Montemayor's labeling study (see record 1975-29893-001) using samples. Exp I, with 120 1st and 2nd graders, attempted to reproduce Montemayor's results with boy, girl, and neutral labeling, and to test whether experimenter's relabeling would change the Sex of Child?×?Sex of Label effect on performance. The expected interaction effect was not replicated on the labeling or in the relabeling conditions. The only significant effect on performance was due to grade. Exp II, with 160 1st and 2nd graders, used a design identical to Montemayor's except that the neutral label condition was dropped and sex of experimenter was added as another independent variable. Again, no significant effects on performance were obtained due to labeling or any of the other variables. Ratings of attractiveness did not relate to gender labels in either experiment. Given these twin failures to replicate Montemayor's results, the authors suggest that the effect of gender labels on sex-role socialization has probably been exaggerated. Some explanations for the lack of robustness of the gender-labeling effects are offered. (10 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Infant preferences for attractive faces: Rudiments of a stereotype?

Two studies, one with 2- to 3-month-olds and one with 6- to 8-month-olds, were conducted to examine infant preferences for attractive faces. A standard visual preference technique was used in which infants were shown pairs of color slides of the faces of adult women previously rated by other adults for attractiveness. The results showed that both the older and younger infants looked longer at attractive faces when the faces were presented in contrasting pairs of attractiveness (attractive/unattractive). When the faces were presented in pairs of similar levels of attractiveness (attractive/attractive vs. unattractive/unattractive) the older but not the younger infants looked longer at attractive faces. The results challenge the commonly held assumption that standards of attractiveness are learned through gradual exposure to the current cultural standard of beauty and are merely "in the eye of the beholder." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effect of a looker’s past reliability on infants’ reasoning about beliefs.

We investigated whether 16-month-old infants’ past experience with a person’s gaze reliability influences their expectation about the person’s ability to form beliefs. Infants were first administered a search task in which they observed an experimenter show excitement while looking inside a box that either contained a toy (reliable looker condition) or was empty (unreliable looker condition). The infants were then administered a true belief task in which they watched as the same experimenter hid a toy in 1 of 2 locations. In the test trial, the infants witnessed the experimenter search for the toy in a location that was consistent or inconsistent with her belief about the toy’s location. Results for the true belief task indicated that only the infants in the reliable looker condition looked longer at the incongruent than at the congruent search behavior. These findings are consistent with evidence suggesting that infants encode the identity of agents based on past reliability and implicitly attribute beliefs to others during the 2nd year of life. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Use of analogy in learning scientific concepts.

[Correction Notice: An erratum for this article was reported in Vol 19(5) of Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition (see record 2008-10486-001). The captions for Figures 1 and 2 on pp. 979 and 980, respectively, were transposed. The figures and the correct captions are included in the erratum.] Four experiments compared learning of scientific concepts as expressed in either traditional literal form or through an analogy. Comprehension of basic-level details and inferential implications was measured through muliple-choice testing. In Exp 1, literal or analogical renditions were presented in textual form only. In Exp 2, text was accompanied by a dynamic video. In Exp 3, the video and text literal rendition was compared with a text-only analogical rendition. In Exp 4, Ss read only about a familiar domain. Ss consistently answered basic-level questions most accurately when concepts were expressed literally, but answered inferential questions most accurately when concepts were expressed analogically. Analysis of individual differences (Exp 2) indicated that this interaction strongly characterized the conceptual learning of science novices. The results are discussed within the framework of schema induction. [A correction to this article appears in Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 1993, Vol 19(5), 1093. The captions for Figures 1 and 2 are corrected.] (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

It's a sign of the kind: Gestures and words guide infants' inductive inferences.

The role of words and gestures in guiding infants' inductive inferences about nonobvious properties was examined. One hundred seventy-two 14-month-olds and 22-month-olds were presented with novel target objects followed by test objects that varied in similarity to the target. Objects were introduced with a novel word or a novel gesture or with no label. When target and test objects were highly similar in shape, both 14- and 22-month-olds inferred that these objects shared a nonobvious property, regardless of whether the objects were labeled with a word or a gesture or with no label. When objects were labeled with the same word, both 14- and 22-month-olds generalized the nonobvious properties to objects that shared minimal perceptual similarity. Finally, when objects were labeled with the same gesture, 14-month-olds, but not 22-month-olds, generalized the nonobvious properties to objects that shared minimal perceptual similarity. These results indicate that 14-month-olds possess a more generalized symbolic system as they will rely on both words and gestures to guide their inferences. By 22-months of age, infants treat words as a privileged referential form when making inductive inferences. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of response strategy and retention interval on performance of Clark's nutcrackers in a radial maze analogue.

Two groups of Clark's nutcrackers (Nucifraga columbiana) were trained to use either a stay or shift response strategy in a radial maze analog. Each trial had a preretention stage, a retention interval, and a postretention test. In Exp 1, acquisition with a 5-min retention interval was studied. Response strategy did not affect the rate at which the task was learned. Performance following longer retention intervals was tested in Exps 2–4. Changes in retention intervals were presented in trial blocks of increasing duration in Exp 2 and were randomly presented between trials in Exp 3. Exp 4 extended the retention interval to 24 hrs. No difference in performance was found between the 2 groups in any of these experiments. These results suggest a flexible relationship between spatial memory and response requirement in food-hoarding birds for at least 1 spatial memory task. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Use of analogy in learning scientific concepts": Correction to Donnelly and McDaniel.

Reports an error in "Use of analogy in learning scientific concepts" by Carol M. Donnelly and Mark A. McDaniel (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 1993[Jul], Vol 19[4], 975-987). The captions for Figures 1 and 2 on pp. 979 and 980, respectively, were transposed. The figures and the correct captions are included in the erratum. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 1993-44140-001.) Four experiments compared learning of scientific concepts as expressed in either traditional literal form or through an analogy. Comprehension of basic-level details and inferential implications was measured through multiple-choice testing. In Exp 1, literal or analogical renditions were presented in textual form only. In Exp 2, text was accompanied by a dynamic video. In Exp 3, the video and text literal rendition was compared with a text-only analogical rendition. In Exp 4, Ss read only about a familiar domain. Ss consistently answered basic-level questions most accurately when concepts were expressed literally, but answered inferential questions most accurately when concepts were expressed analogically. Analysis of individual differences (Exp 2) indicated that this interaction strongly characterized the conceptual learning of science novices. The results are discussed within the framework of schema induction. [A correction to this article appears in Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 1993, Vol 19(5), 1093. The captions for Figures 1 and 2 are corrected.] (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Temporal and content variations as determinants of infants' visual control of verbal stimulations.

20 93–119 day old infants were presented with utterances varying in content or temporal structure that were contingent on fixation on a visual target. Treatment A consisted of utterances of equal duration and continually varying content. Treatment B consisted of utterances of slightly variable duration (temporal runs) and continually varying content. Treatment C included utterances organized in temporal runs and was composed of partial content variations (content runs). For Group AB, each A trial alternated with a B trial 4 times. For Group AC, each A trial alternated with a C trial 4 times. Half of the Ss in each group received Treatment A as their 1st trial; half of the Ss in Group AB received Treatment B; and half of the Ss in Group AC received Treatment C as their 1st trial. Group AB Ss showed a longer total fixation time than those of Group AC, with a more homogeneous distribution of number of fixations across treatments. Mean length of fixations was longer for Treatment A than B in Group AB, whereas Group AC showed a longer mean length of fixation for Treatment C relative to Treatment A. Those with Treatment B or C as their 1st trial looked more frequently at the target, and their decrease in looking time over trials showed a linear trend, whereas Ss with Treatment A at first displayed irregular decreases. These differences between groups and presentation orders suggest that 3-mo-old infants are sensitive to differences in linguistic material. (36 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of visual, haptic, and manipulatory experiences on infants' visual recognition memory of objects.

To determine the effects of visual, haptic, and manipulatory experiences on visual recognition of objects' shapes, 108 6-, 9-, and 12-mo-old infants were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 stimulus familiarization conditions in which they either only looked at an object (visual), looked at and manipulated an object (visual-haptic), or looked at an object encased in a transparent box that the infant manipulated (visual-manipulatory). Visual recognition memory was assessed by the paired-comparison technique in which memory is indexed by infants' differential preferences for novel and familiar stimuli. The major findings were that (a) 12-mo-olds showed evidence of memory in all conditions, (b) younger Ss showed evidence of memory only in the visual condition, and (c) at all ages Ss' preference for novel relative to familiar stimuli was significantly greater in the visual condition than in the visual-haptic and visual-manipulatory conditions, with the latter conditions not differing significantly. It is argued that the manipulatory activity per se depressed Ss' differential preferences in the visual-haptic and visual-manipulatory conditions. (33 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)