Infant Learning Flashcards

1
Q

ways humans learn

A
  • Social/observational learning: watching older, wiser con-specifics engaging in behaviours and imitate them
  • Episodic learning; as we’re exposed to stimulus, we understand more about that stimulus and what’s associated with it
  • Rational learning: understanding the material and the relationship to its components
  • Classical or operant conditioning: learning to associate behaviours and situations…*
  • Memorization: rote learning
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2
Q

6 types of infant learning

A
  • associative
  • statistical
  • classical conditioning
  • operant conditioning
  • imitation
  • rational learning
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3
Q

associative learning

A
  • Infants learn by picking out regularities in their environment
  • The association between 2 events is learned over time
  • Infants learn to associate the sound of a dog barking with the sight of the dog
  • Intermodal matching (eg. Visual correlates of auditory stimuli; gustatory correlates of visual stimuli -> ex. After tasting enough cookies, we can predict what a cookie will taste like based on how it looks)
  • Some parts of intermodal matching may be innate
  • Ex. Nubby vs. Smooth teether study: babies looked longer at the picture of whichever toy was put in their mouth even though they hadn’t seen it before
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4
Q

statistical learning

A
  • Learning the order in which stimuli occur -> detecting statistical predictable patterns in stimuli
  • Ex. Learning that when people put on shoes, they then go outside
  • This kind of learning can be powerful -> can help us learn about speech, music, and visual perception
  • ex. Word segmentation
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5
Q

word segmentation

A
  • how babies figure out the individual words in a string of speech
  • Babies keep track of how often sounds are paired together in order to figure out individual words
  • Ex. “Pretty baby” -> The probability of “tty” coming after “pre” to make the word “pretty” is higher than the probability of “ba” coming after “tty” to make “ttyba”
  • Ex. Monotone sounds demo: babies looked longer at words they hadn’t heard very often in the jumbled up sounds, and not as long at words that they’d heard often in the sounds
  • Babies are much better at this than adults -> statistical learning is better, possibly because they have less cognitive functions to access, therefore less distractions
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6
Q

classical conditioning

A
  • Learning to associate a neutral stimulus with a stimulus that evokes a certain response
  • Unconditioned stimulus = naturally produces a response (unconditioned response)
  • Conditioned stimulus = stimulus that gets paired with unconditioned stimulus to eventually elicit the same response by itself (conditioned response)
  • Classical condition in infancy
  • Citrus scent can be conditioned to elicit head turns in 30-day-olds
  • US = face massage, UR/CR = head turn, CS = citrus scent
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7
Q

operant/instrumental conditioning

A
  • Learning to associate one’s own behaviour with an elicited response -> ex. Mobile tied to baby’s foot, baby learns that moving will move mobile and create a pleasurable effect -> positive reinforcement
  • Can be observed in neonates as well as older infants
  • High-amplitude sucking procedure can be used to demonstrate operant conditioning
  • Infants learn to suck harder.faster if it consistently produces a pleasurable sensation (ex. A fun noise)
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8
Q

imitation

A
  • Appears early on n birth, but unsure if innate
  • One of the most powerful ways that infants learn is by imitating others
  • Perhaps as early as immediately after birth
  • However, newborns do not always imitate -> replications of newborn imitation studies have failed
  • Same effect is quite robust by 6 months
  • Infants can be picky about whom they imitate – either familiar (ex. Family, caregiver), ingroup (in this case, people who speak the same language)
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9
Q

in-group out-group imitation study

A
  • 14-month-old infants more faithfully imitate members of their in-group
  • Condition 1: English-speaking babies were told stories in English, then watched the man turn on lamp using his head
  • Condition 2: English-speaking babies were told stories in Spanish, then watched the man turn on lamp with his head
  • Later on, when asked to “do what the man did”, they all imitated the **goal (all turned on the lamp), but only the babies who’d heard the English story (perceived the man as member of their in-group), imitated the **manner (using their head)
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10
Q

who do children faithfully imitate as they get older?

A

People who are…

  • More accurate
  • More knowledgeable and confident
  • Share arbitrary characteristics with them (eg. Same shirt colour)
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11
Q

rational learning

A
  • Adults use rational learning extensively -> Inference based on prior data, Understanding the relationships between the components of a scene/stimulus
  • Infants to seem to have access to rational learning
  • Infants are surprised when expectations are violated
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12
Q

violation of expectation paradigm: ball study

A
  • Red and white ball example: infants see a clear box full of red balls with some white ones, then close the lid so that the infant can’t see inside anymore
  • Researchers then reach inside and pull out a few balls -> infants looked longer when the experimenter removed white balls because they weren’t expecting white balls to come out since there were so many red balls
  • If red balls are pulled out, infants eventually habituate
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