Infants' detection of contingency: a cognitive-neuroscience perspective

Advances in developmental cognitive neuroscience have generated important and interesting data that are relevant to infants' perception of contingencies. The author discusses concepts of "binding" (i.e., the binding of stimulus properties across space, and binding of events across time) within the context of the cognitive-neuroscience approach to learning. Issues relevant to infant contingency perception are also addressed. Previously published data on infant contingency perception and discrimination learning from the author's laboratory are reinterpreted in terms of these binding concepts, as well as the development of the neural substrates that presumably underlie the perception of stimulus attributes and temporal redundancy.