An initial but receding altercentric bias in preverbal infants' memory

Abstract

Young learners would seem to face a daunting challenge in selecting to what they should attend, a problem that may have been exacerbated in human infants by changes in carrying practices during human evolution. A novel theory proposes that human infant cognition has an altercentric bias whereby early in life, infants prioritize encoding events that are the targets of others’ attention. We tested for this bias by asking whether, when the infant and an observing agent have a conflicting perspective on an object's location, the co-witnessed location is better remembered. We found that 8- but not 12-month-olds expected the object to be at the location where the agent had seen it. These findings suggest that in the first year of life, infants may prioritize the encoding of events to which others attend, even though it may sometimes result in memory errors. However, the disappearance of this bias by 12 months suggests that altercentricism is a feature of very early cognition. We propose that it facilitates learning at a unique stage in the life history when motoric immaturity limits infants' interaction with the environment; at this stage, observing others could maximally leverage the information selection process.

A dorsal versus ventral network for understanding others in the developing brain

“…Further, this is in line with several recent theoretical accounts suggesting that success in non-verbal ToM tasks may rely on social cues that guide children's attention and memory (36,38). Indeed, recent behavioral data show that infants misremember objects in a location cued by the presence or gaze of another person (39), potentially allowing them to predict where the other person will search for these objects in non-verbal ToM tasks. In young children who lack the cognitive capacities for mature ToM, bottom-up social cueing may thus facilitate the understanding of others and ability to learn from them (36,38).…”

The origins and emergence of self-representation

“…In work from our lab, we have shown that in the first year of life and early in the second, before they would typically show mirror self-recognition, infants prioritize encoding and remembering events as they were for others. For example, in one study, 7-month-old infants misremembered the location of an object where a co-witnessing agent had seen it, even though the infant subsequently saw the object move to a new location after the cowitnessing agent had disappeared (Manea et al, 2023). We found a similar memory error for object kind in 14-month-olds (Kampis et al, 2024).…”

Altercentric memory error at 9 months but correct object memory by 18 months revealed in infants’ pupil

“…A recent study found first indications of such an altercentric bias in the first year of life (Manea et al, 2023). Specifically, 8-months-olds seemed to misremember an object's location if an agent had only seen it in a first location but did not witness its transfer to a second location, as indicated by longer looking times to revealing the first compared to the second location as empty.…”

“…Against this background, in the present study we addressed the following questions: (1) Can the previously observed altercentric memory error (Manea et al, 2023) be replicated with a different, potentially more sensitive measure? (2) How does this memory bias develop in the second year of life (particularly, at 18 months as mirror self-recognition emerges)?…”

“…While the study by Manea et al (2023) had used infants' cumulative looking times as a measure of their expectations, we measured infants' pupil size. In contrast to looking times or gaze, pupillary responses are functionally related to increased attention and cognitive effort (Hepach & Westermann, 2016;Sirois & Jackson, 2012).…”