Two-day-old newborns learn to discriminate accelerated-decelerated biological kinematics from constant velocity motion

Craighero, Laila; Ghirardi, Valentina; Lunghi, Marco; Panin, Fiorenza; Simion, Francesca

doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2019.104126

Cited by 13 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 56 publications

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“…Hence, its presence in the first year of life is in line with the idea that complex functions do not need to be innate, as they can rather emerge from the early accumulation of evidence 5,34 , combined with powerful learning mechanisms 3 and fundamental attentional biases 35 . Recent theoretical and empirical work favours the idea that high-level cognitive systems can be generated via sub-symbolic dynamics 16,36 .…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 63%

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Eight-month-old infants meta-learn by downweighting irrelevant evidence

Poli¹,

Ghilardi²,

Mars³

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Infants learn to navigate the complexity of the physical and social world at an outstanding pace, but how they accomplish this learning is still unknown. Recent advances in human and artificial intelligence research propose that a key feature to achieve quick and efficient learning is meta-learning, the ability to make use of prior experiences to optimize how future information is acquired. Here we show that 8-month-old infants successfully engage in meta-learning within very short timespans. We developed a Bayesian model that captures how infants attribute informativity to incoming events, and how this process is optimized by the meta-parameters of their hierarchical models over the task structure. We fitted the model using infants’ gaze behaviour during a learning task. Our results reveal that infants do not simply accumulate experiences, but actively use them to generate new inductive biases that allow learning to proceed faster in the future.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 63%

“…Infants' learning abilities are advanced from early in life 2,3 and possibly from birth 4,5 . However, whether infants are capable of meta-learning is still unknown.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Eight-month-old infants meta-learn by downweighting irrelevant evidence

Poli¹,

Ghilardi²,

Mars³

et al. 2021

Preprint

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show abstract

“…Therefore, to test whether the visual perceptual system at birth is sensitive to acceleration, future studies should implement stimuli, such those employed in the present study, with a gradual speed change, that is the more natural speed profile expected for animate creatures. Indeed, we already know that such stimulus manipulation elicited a spontaneous preference for the natural speed changing stimulus in visually naïve chicks 44 , but not in human newborns 47,48 . However, it must be pointed out that in the study on newborns, the stimuli employed were complex Point-Light Display (PLD) of goal-directed grasping hand actions and, therefore, no direct comparison between the results of the previous and present study can be done.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Newborns’ sensitivity to speed changes as a building block for animacy perception

Giorgio

Lunghi

Vallortígara

et al. 2021

Sci Rep

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The human visual system can discriminate between animate beings vs. inanimate objects on the basis of some kinematic cues, such as starting from rest and speed changes by self-propulsion. The ontogenetic origin of such capability is still under debate. Here we investigate for the first time whether newborns manifest an attentional bias toward objects that abruptly change their speed along a trajectory as contrasted with objects that move at a constant speed. To this end, we systematically manipulated the motion speed of two objects. An object that moves with a constant speed was contrasted with an object that suddenly increases (Experiment 1) or with one that suddenly decreases its speed (Experiment 2). When presented with a single speed change, newborns did not show any visual preference. However, newborns preferred an object that abruptly increases and then decreases its speed (Experiment 3), but they did not show any visual preference for the reverse sequence pattern (Experiment 4). Overall, results are discussed in line with the hypothesis of the existence of attentional biases in newborns that trigger their attention towards some visual cues of motion that characterized animate perception in adults.

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“…The aforementioned evidence prompted a handful of studies to investigate whether early motor experience could impact newborns' visual sensitivity to actions and gestures at birth. Indeed, findings have shown that newborns are already attuned to several features that characterize human actions and gestures (Craighero et al., 2020 ; Craighero et al., 2011 ; Craighero et al., 2016 ; Longhi et al., 2015 ). For example, newborns can discriminate between biomechanically possible and impossible whole hand grasping movements, showing a visual preference for the latter (Longhi et al., 2015 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/desc 1 of 7 https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.13162 have shown that newborns are already attuned to several features that characterize human actions and gestures (Craighero et al, 2020;Craighero et al, 2011;Craighero et al, 2016;Longhi et al, 2015).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Newborns’ early attuning to hand‐to‐mouth coordinated actions

Addabbo

Roberti

Colombo

et al. 2021

Developmental Science

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Already inside the womb, fetuses frequently bring their hands to the mouth, anticipating hand-to-mouth contact by opening the mouth. Here, we explored whether 2-dayold newborns discriminate between hand actions directed towards different targets of the face-that is, a thumb that reaches the mouth and a thumb that reaches the chin. Newborns looked longer towards the thumb-to-mouth compared to the thumbto-chin action only in the presence, and not absence, of anticipatory mouth opening movements, preceding the thumb arrival. Overall, our results show that newborns are sensitive to hand-to-face coordinated actions, being capable to discriminate between body-related actions directed towards different targets of the face, but only when a salient visual cue that anticipates the target of the action is present. The role of newborns' sensorimotor experience with hand-to-mouth gestures in driving this capacity is discussed.

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Two-day-old newborns learn to discriminate accelerated-decelerated biological kinematics from constant velocity motion

Cited by 13 publications

References 56 publications

Eight-month-old infants meta-learn by downweighting irrelevant evidence

Eight-month-old infants meta-learn by downweighting irrelevant evidence

Newborns’ sensitivity to speed changes as a building block for animacy perception

Newborns’ early attuning to hand‐to‐mouth coordinated actions

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