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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
Social interaction targets enhance 13-month-old infants' associative learning
Maleen Thiele1,2, Robert Hepach3, Christine Michel2,4
1Department of Comparative Cultural Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany.
Infants learn associations faster when shown social interactions. This suggests observing others interact is intrinsically rewarding for babies, driving their learning.
Area of Science:
- Developmental psychology
- Cognitive science
- Infant learning
Background:
- Infants show attention to third-party interactions.
- Mechanisms underlying this preference are not well understood.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate if infants selectively learn cue-target associations for social interaction videos.
- To determine if social interactions act as primary reinforcers in infant learning.
Main Methods:
- A visual learning task was used with 13-month-old infants (N=32).
- Geometrical shapes were paired with videos of adult social interactions or individual actions.
- Infants' saccadic latencies and gaze shifts were measured.
Main Results:
- Infants exhibited faster saccadic latencies toward social interaction targets.
- Infants showed more predictive gaze shifts during social interaction trials.
- This indicates infants selectively learned associations with social interaction cues.
Conclusions:
- Social interaction targets function as primary reinforcers in associative learning for infants.
- Observing social interactions is intrinsically valuable to infants.
- This supports the innate value infants place on social observation.
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