Mechanisms of Statistical Learning in Infancy

Johnson, Scott P.

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-35594-4_2

Cited by 4 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 91 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Perception involves recognizing the structure of a dynamic, multimodal environment. From birth, infants have the astonishing ability to detect regularities, so‐called statistical information , in stimulus sequences by processing specific distributions of frequencies, redundancies, or transitional probabilities of stimuli in a sequence (for an overview, see Johnson, 2020; Saffran & Kirkham, 2018). They can perceive such regular information in their environment without any instructions or feedback.…”

Section: Infants' Predictions In Perception Cognition and Actionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Infants' predictive minds: The role of motor experience

Schwarzer,

Jovanovic

2024

Child Dev Perspectives

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The ability to predict upcoming events is essential in infancy because it enables babies to process information optimally and have successful goal‐directed interactions with their environment. In this article, we examine how infants generate predictions in perception, cognition, and action, and address whether and how their predictions are motivated and affected by their motor development. Our synthesis of research demonstrates that infants form predictions in the perception, cognition, and action domains based on perceived statistical information, pre‐existing and newly generated knowledge, and internal motor models. Our analysis reveals that infants' increasing fine and gross motor experiences have a moderating impact on the elaboration of the different bases for predictions. Based on this, we conclude that new motor experiences enable infants to constantly improve the bases from which they generate and update their predictions.

show abstract

Section: Infants' Predictions In Perception Cognition and Actionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Infants' predictive minds: The role of motor experience

Schwarzer,

Jovanovic

2024

Child Dev Perspectives

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Despite the fact that there have been relatively few attempts to define mechanism , this term has been used extensively in the developmental literature (e.g., Feigenson & Carey, 2005; Gureckis & Love, 2004; Johnson, 2020; Jones & Smith, 2002; Oakes & Rakison, 2020; Saffran et al, 1996; Sloutsky et al, 2017; Werchan et al, 2015; Xu & Garcia, 2008). The absence of an explicit definition of mechanism is problematic because developmental researchers and theorists can disagree and debate about what does and does not ‘count’ as mechanism research.…”

Section: Definition Of Developmental Mechanisms Of Cognitive Changementioning

confidence: 99%

‘But what is the mechanism?’: Demystifying the ever elusive ‘developmental mechanism’

Benton

2022

Infant and Child Development

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Few issues are more important to developmental scientists than understanding and elucidating mechanisms of developmental change. There are good reasons for this. For example, understanding how developmental change is produced allows developmental researchers to go beyond studying at what age an ability emerges to understanding the underlying processes by which those abilities develop in the first place. Yet, despite their importance, the term mechanism is not well understood. This lack of understanding is problematic because researchers and theorists can disagree and debate about what does and does not ‘count’ as mechanism research, which can slow scientific progress. Given this issue, this paper has three broad aims. The first aim was to provide a clear definition for one kind of developmental mechanism, namely, developmental mechanisms of cognitive change. The second aim is to provide a concrete example of a developmental mechanism and discuss how it works in detail, from start to finish. The third aim is to challenge the field to be more explicit about how their proposed developmental mechanisms work to ensure scientific progress.

show abstract

“…One learning process that might be especially shaped by the regularity of our experiences, including the predictability of caregiver input, is statistical learning, or learning about the statistically predictable information in our environment (see Aslin, 2017;Johnson, 2020;Saffran, 2020;Saffran & Kirkham, 2018 for recent reviews on statsitical learning in infancy). Seminal work indicated that infants can use only the statistical properties of their auditory input to support language learning.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Early caregiver predictability shapes neural indices of statistical learning later in infancy

Forest,

McCormick,

Davel

et al. 2024

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Caregivers play an outsized role in shaping early life experiences and development, but we often lack mechanistic insight into how exactly caregiver behavior scaffolds the neurodevelopment of specific learning processes. Here, we capitalized on the fact that caregivers differ in how predictable their behavior is to ask if infants’ early environmental input shapes their brains’ later ability to learn about predictable information. As part of an ongoing longitudinal study in South Africa, we recorded naturalistic, dyadic interactions between 103 (46 female, 57 male) infants and their primary caregivers at 3-6 months of age, from which we calculated the predictability of caregivers’ behavior, following caregiver vocalizing and overall. When the same infants were 6- 12-months-old they participated in an auditory statistical learning task during EEG. We found evidence of learning-related change in infants’ neural responses to predictable information during the statistical learning task. The magnitude of statistical learning-related change in infants’ EEG responses was associated with the predictability of their caregivers’ vocalizations several months earlier, such that infants with more predictable caregiver vocalization patterns showed more evidence of statistical learning later in the first year of life. These results together suggest that early experience with caregiver predictability shapes learning in the matching sensory modality, providing support for the hypothesis that the neurodevelopment of core learning and memory systems is closely tied to infants’ experiences during key developmental windows.

show abstract

Mechanisms of Statistical Learning in Infancy

Cited by 4 publications

References 91 publications

Infants' predictive minds: The role of motor experience

Infants' predictive minds: The role of motor experience

‘But what is the mechanism?’: Demystifying the ever elusive ‘developmental mechanism’

Early caregiver predictability shapes neural indices of statistical learning later in infancy

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About