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Brain and cognitive development in infancy
1MRC Cognitive Development Unit, University College London, UK.
Insights
Infant cognitive and perceptual abilities emerge early, supported by developmental neuroscience. While some skills like visual attention develop through multiple processes, others like object permanence are less understood.
Area of Science:
- Developmental Psychology
- Cognitive Neuroscience
- Comparative Psychology
Background:
- Infant behavioral studies reveal early cognitive and perceptual skills.
- Developmental neuroscience and comparative psychology support multiple neurocognitive processes in early development.
- Innate abilities may facilitate later experience-dependent learning.
Purpose of the Study:
- To review evidence for early infant cognitive and perceptual abilities.
- To examine the role of multiple neurocognitive processes in developmental trajectories.
- To question previous models of sequential development in specific cognitive domains.
Main Methods:
- Behavioral studies of infants.
- Evidence synthesis from developmental neuroscience.
- Comparative psychology research.
Main Results:
- Confirmed early cognitive and perceptual abilities in infants.
- Identified multiple neurocognitive processes underlying visual attention, face, and speech recognition.
- Challenged sequential development models for object permanence and memory.
Conclusions:
- Early-emerging abilities and constraints are crucial for development.
- Developmental trajectories are shaped by both innate factors and experience.
- Understanding infant cognition requires considering multiple interacting neurocognitive systems.
Abstract:
Recent behavioral studies of infants have provided further evidence for the existence of cognitive and perceptual abilities in the first few months of life. Additional evidence from developmental neuroscience and comparative psychology has supported the view that, in some domains, such as visual attention and face and speech recognition, multiple neurocognitive processes give rise to the pattern of behavioral development observed over the first years of life. Primitive abilities and constraints present from birth may play an important role in facilitating the development of later-emerging processes that are more responsive to the effects of experience. In other domains, such as object permanence and memory, previous claims that the pattern of development was best accounted for by the sequential development of multiple neurocognitive systems have been brought into question.