The Developing Infant Creates a Curriculum for Statistical Learning

Abstract

New efforts are using head cameras and eye-trackers worn by infants to capture everyday visual environments from the point of view of the infant learner. From this vantage point, the training sets for statistical learning develop as the sensorimotor abilities of the infant develop, yielding a series of ordered datasets for visual learning that differ in content and structure between timepoints but are highly selective at each timepoint. These changing environments may constitute a developmentally ordered curriculum that optimizes learning across many domains. Future advances in computational models will be necessary to connect the developmentally changing content and statistics of infant experience to the internal machinery that does the learning.

Infant and adult brains are coupled to the dynamics of natural communication

“…The findings support transactional development models, which emphasize not only the role of adult input but the child's role in shaping his own input (Sameroff & Chandler, 1975;Sameroff, 2009; for related ideas, see Smith, Jayaraman, Clerkin, and Yu, 2018). Our results expand on these frameworks and demonstrate a new application of dynamic systems theory (Thelen & Smith, 1996) by showing how infants' neural activity can also shape the activity in an adult's brain in highly natural, social interaction.…”

Statistical Language Learning in Infancy

“…Parallel literatures in developmental robotics and neuroscience support the efficacy of curiosity‐driven learning procedures (e.g., Kidd & Hayden, ; Oudeyer & Smith, ). The emerging developmental literature suggests a view of infants as active learners who sample from their environment to maximize learning outcomes (e.g., Sim & Xu, ; Smith, Jayaraman, Clerkin, & Yu, ). Oudeyer and Smith () summarize the concept this way:

These theoretical advances lead to a definition of curiosity as an epistemic motivational mechanism that pushes an organism to explore activities for the primary sake of gaining information (as opposed to searching for information in service of achieving an external goal like finding food or shelter).

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“…Parallel literatures in developmental robotics and neuroscience support the efficacy of curiosity-driven learning procedures (e.g., Kidd & Hayden, 2015;Oudeyer & Smith, 2016). The emerging developmental literature suggests a view of infants as active learners who sample from their environment to maximize learning outcomes (e.g., Sim & Xu, 2017;Smith, Jayaraman, Clerkin, & Yu, 2018). Oudeyer and Smith (2016) summarize the concept this way:…”

Automated sensing of daily activity: A new lens into development

“…Analyses of the footage indicated that the distribution of faces in infants' view is highest within the first months of life and then decreases in the first 2 years, whereas the distribution of hands in infants’ view shows the reverse trajectory. These striking regularities have implications for what is learned and learnable across the first 2 years of life (Smith, Jayaraman, Clerkin, & Yu, ). For example, the frequency with which particular objects appeared in view aligned with early word learning, suggesting the importance of these daily exposures for learning outcomes (Clerkin, Hart, Rehg, Yu, & Smith, ).…”

“…These include extended periods of non‐interaction between parents and their children (Tamis‐LeMonda et al, ), the propensity to walk in circles rather than in a straight line (Lee et al, ), or the low proportion of faces present in the view of toddlers (Jayaraman, Fausey, & Smith, ). These common but seldom observed‐in‐laboratory features of experience may have critical developmental functions (Smith et al, ): children may learn to gaze follow not from looking at eyes but looking at hands (Deak, Krasno, Triesch, Lewis, & Sepeta, ); extended silences between interactions may be critical for consolidation and marking of semantic boundaries (Tamis‐LeMonda et al, ). Sensing daily activity can provide new access to these previously unmeasured aspects of children’s experiences.…”