Infant Cognition
Infant Cognition - Related Videos
12:48
Investigating Social Cognition in Infants and Adults Using Dense Array Electroencephalography (dEEG)
0 Views •
Cited by 2 •
2011
Dense array electroencephalography is being used increasingly to study social cognitive functions in infants and adults. Here we present an established methodology that represents a significant improvement on conventional methodologies for studying EEG in infants and adults.
05:35
Experience is Instrumental in Tuning a Link Between Language and Cognition: Evidence from 6- to 7- Month-Old Infants' Object Categorization
0 Views •
Cited by 1 •
2017
At 3-4 months, listening to human and nonhuman primate vocalizations boosts infants' cognition; by 6 months, only human vocalizations exert this cognitive advantage. We describe an exposure manipulation that reveals the powerful shaping role of experience as infants specify which sounds to link to cognition and which to tune out.
05:59
Numerical Cognition: More or Less
0 Views •
2023
Source: Laboratories of Nicholaus Noles and Judith Danovitch—University of Louisville One of the goals of the modern education system is to teach children mathematical literacy. They are taught to add, subtract, multiply, and divide, and this base knowledge is used to support learning about geometry, algebra, calculus, physics, and statistics. School-aged children usually acquire these skills in formal educational settings, but the foundation of mathematical understanding is developed much...
07:25
Habituation: Studying Infants Before They Can Talk
0 Views •
2023
Source: Laboratories of Nicholaus Noles, Judith Danovitch, and Cara Cashon—University of Louisville Infants are one of the purest sources of information about human thinking and learning, because they’ve had very few life experiences. Thus, researchers are interested in gathering data from infants, but as participants in experimental research, they are a challenging group to study. Unlike older children and adults, young infants are unable to reliably speak, understand speech, or even move and...
12:55
P50 Sensory Gating in Infants
0 Views •
Cited by 5 •
2013
Methods to record auditory P50 sensory gating, a physiological marker of cerebral inhibition which reflects early stages of attention, are described.
FAQs
Development reflects an interaction between biological maturation and experience. As neural systems mature, sensory encounters provide information that helps infants detect patterns, organize perceptions, and build expectations about events. This interaction means early cognitive abilities are not explained by maturation or experience alone, but by how developing systems process the changing information available through everyday interactions.
These processes work together to identify regularities in the environment. Attention selects information, perception organizes sensory input, memory preserves aspects of earlier encounters, and learning changes responses as patterns become meaningful. Together, they help infants recognize familiar people and respond appropriately when events change, providing a foundation for increasingly organized expectations about the world.
Memory allows infants to use information from earlier experiences when encountering people or events again. When an experience resembles something previously encountered, remembered information can support recognition; when it changes, the infant’s response may reveal sensitivity to that difference. This makes memory central to studying how infants move beyond immediate sensory reactions toward organized knowledge.
Habituation is one of the response-based methods psychologists use to examine how infants react to familiar and novel stimuli. By focusing on changes in responses across these stimulus conditions, researchers can investigate whether infants detect repetition or notice something new. The method therefore provides evidence about early attention, perception, learning, and sensitivity to change.
Preferential-looking tasks assess how infants distribute their looking responses when presented with stimuli. Differences in looking toward familiar or novel items can provide information about what infants perceive, attend to, or recognize. Within infant cognition research, this approach helps psychologists examine early processing without requiring infants to describe their experiences verbally.
Imitation tasks provide another way to assess infants’ responses in a structured research setting. Researchers can use infants’ imitative behavior as information about how they respond to observed actions, alongside findings from habituation and preferential-looking tasks. This broadens assessment beyond visual responses and contributes to the study of learning during early development.
Findings can clarify developmental milestones and strengthen theories of learning and social development. They may also support early identification of atypical development by showing how infants respond across cognitive tasks. In applied contexts, this knowledge can inform responsive caregiving and educational interventions designed around infants’ developing attention, perception, memory, and learning processes.