Jove
Visualize
Contact Us
JoVE
x logofacebook logolinkedin logoyoutube logo
ABOUT JoVE
OverviewLeadershipBlogJoVE Help Center
AUTHORS
Publishing ProcessEditorial BoardScope & PoliciesPeer ReviewFAQSubmit
LIBRARIANS
TestimonialsSubscriptionsAccessResourcesLibrary Advisory BoardFAQ
RESEARCH
JoVE JournalMethods CollectionsJoVE Encyclopedia of ExperimentsArchive
EDUCATION
JoVE CoreJoVE BusinessJoVE Science EducationJoVE Lab ManualFaculty Resource CenterFaculty Site
Terms & Conditions of Use
Privacy Policy
Policies

Related Concept Videos

The Nativist Approach01:21

The Nativist Approach

570
The nativist approach to infant cognitive development proposes that infants are born with inherent knowledge structures that allow them to interpret the world almost immediately. This perspective contrasts with earlier developmental theories, such as those proposed by Jean Piaget, which emphasized a more gradual acquisition of cognitive abilities through interaction with the environment. One key concept in this approach is object permanence — the understanding that objects continue to...
570
Piaget's Stage 1 of Cognitive Development01:14

Piaget's Stage 1 of Cognitive Development

2.3K
The sensorimotor stage, the initial phase of Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development, spans the first two years of a child's life. During this period, infants actively engage with their surroundings, building cognitive awareness through direct interaction with the world. This interaction is primarily based on sensory perception and motor actions, allowing infants to gradually understand basic physical properties and predict how objects interact within their environment.
Exploration...
2.3K
Relationship with Parents: Attachment01:28

Relationship with Parents: Attachment

339
Parent-child interactions lay the foundation for how we understand relationships throughout life. These interactions are not uniform across families; instead, they are shaped by a range of environmental, emotional, and behavioral factors unique to each caregiver-child dynamic. Social psychologists study these early relationships to understand how patterns formed in infancy influence social functioning and interpersonal behavior in adulthood.Attachment Theory and Early Relational ModelsJohn...
339
Attachment01:20

Attachment

699
Attachment is vital for infant development, as warm social interactions support growth and well-being. In a classic 1958 study by Harry Harlow, the significance of warmth and comfort in forming attachments was examined. Harlow separated newborn monkeys from their mothers and provided two artificial "mothers": one made of cold wire and the other covered in soft cloth. Despite the wire mother offering food, the infant monkeys preferred the comfort of the cloth mother, demonstrating that...
699
Language Development01:22

Language Development

1.0K
Children master language quickly and with relative ease, supported by both biological predisposition and reinforcement. B. F. Skinner (1957) proposed that language is learned through reinforcement, while Noam Chomsky (1965) argued that language acquisition mechanisms are biologically determined.
The critical period for language acquisition suggests that the ability to acquire language is at its peak early in life. As people age, this proficiency decreases. Language development begins very...
1.0K
Socioemotional Development during Infancy01:30

Socioemotional Development during Infancy

1.1K
Socio-emotional development in infancy is primarily shaped by early emotional responses and social connections, with temperament playing a central role. Temperament refers to the consistent patterns in an individual's emotional and behavioral responses, observable even in infancy. By examining temperament, researchers can better understand an infant's unique ways of interacting with the world, influencing subsequent personality and socio-emotional growth.
Primary Temperament Types
1.1K

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by
Same author

Cognitive impairments associated with meningiomas and gliomas in adults: A systematic review.

Neuropsychology·2026
Same author

Untangling brain and behavioural measures of visual statistical learning: A longitudinal study in infancy.

Developmental cognitive neuroscience·2026
Same author

The infant brain rapidly entrains to visual statistical regularities during stimulus exposure.

Imaging neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.)·2026
Same author

Pushing the boundaries of MEG based on optically pumped magnetometers towards early human life.

Imaging neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.)·2025
Same author

To What Extent Can Statistical Learning Explain Language Profiles in Autism? Methodological and Theoretical Challenges.

Autism & developmental language impairments·2025
Same author

Exploring Unexpected Bilingualism in Autism: Enhanced Sensitivity to Non-Adjacent Dependencies.

Developmental science·2025

Related Experiment Video

Updated: Mar 25, 2026

Defining the Role Of Language in Infants' Object Categorization with Eye-tracking Paradigms
07:31

Defining the Role Of Language in Infants' Object Categorization with Eye-tracking Paradigms

Published on: February 8, 2019

7.4K

Learning the association between a context and a target location in infancy.

Julie Bertels1,2, Estibaliz San Anton1,2, Titia Gebuis3

  • 1Center for Research in Cognition and Neurosciences (CRCN) and ULB Neuroscience Institute (UNI), Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium.

Developmental Science
|February 28, 2016
PubMed
Summary

Infants learn associations between target locations and contextual shapes. This statistical learning mechanism guides visual attention in early development.

More Related Videos

Experience is Instrumental in Tuning a Link Between Language and Cognition: Evidence from 6- to 7- Month-Old Infants' Object Categorization
05:35

Experience is Instrumental in Tuning a Link Between Language and Cognition: Evidence from 6- to 7- Month-Old Infants' Object Categorization

Published on: April 19, 2017

7.2K
Exploring Infant Sensitivity to Visual Language using Eye Tracking and the Preferential Looking Paradigm
06:07

Exploring Infant Sensitivity to Visual Language using Eye Tracking and the Preferential Looking Paradigm

Published on: May 15, 2019

9.2K

Related Experiment Videos

Last Updated: Mar 25, 2026

Defining the Role Of Language in Infants' Object Categorization with Eye-tracking Paradigms
07:31

Defining the Role Of Language in Infants' Object Categorization with Eye-tracking Paradigms

Published on: February 8, 2019

7.4K
Experience is Instrumental in Tuning a Link Between Language and Cognition: Evidence from 6- to 7- Month-Old Infants' Object Categorization
05:35

Experience is Instrumental in Tuning a Link Between Language and Cognition: Evidence from 6- to 7- Month-Old Infants' Object Categorization

Published on: April 19, 2017

7.2K
Exploring Infant Sensitivity to Visual Language using Eye Tracking and the Preferential Looking Paradigm
06:07

Exploring Infant Sensitivity to Visual Language using Eye Tracking and the Preferential Looking Paradigm

Published on: May 15, 2019

9.2K

Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Developmental Psychology
  • Computational Neuroscience

Background:

  • Infants possess a robust statistical learning mechanism to extract regularities from their environment.
  • Previous research demonstrates infants' ability to learn associations between visual objects presented together or sequentially.
  • The current study investigates infants' capacity to learn associations between target locations and their surrounding context.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To determine if 8- to 12-month-old infants can learn the association between a target object's location and the visual context it appears in.
  • To explore the role of statistical learning in associating spatial information with contextual cues during infancy.
  • To examine how infants process and learn covariation between target locations and contextual elements.

Main Methods:

  • Utilized a visual associative learning procedure adapted from the contextual cuing paradigm.
  • Infants were habituated to scenes where a target's location was consistently paired with specific configurations of geometric shapes.
  • Learning was assessed by measuring infants' looking times at familiar (consistent) versus novel (inconsistent) target-context associations.

Main Results:

  • Infants demonstrated learning of target-context associations, evidenced by longer looking times at familiar scenes compared to novel ones.
  • Results indicate infants can identify and learn covariation between a target's location and a subset of co-occurring contextual shapes.
  • This learning occurred across experiments with varying stimulus complexity.

Conclusions:

  • Infants exhibit a sophisticated statistical learning ability to associate target locations with contextual information.
  • This learned association influences the orientation of infants' visual attention towards relevant environmental areas.
  • The findings highlight a versatile statistical learning mechanism crucial for early visual development and environmental interaction.