How infants learn and develop
Infants learn an enormous amount in a very short space of time – a remarkable achievement enabled by a variety of learning mechanisms
1. Testing learning
Newborn infants can recognize rhymes and stories presented before birth. They prefer smells, taste and sound patterns that are familiar in prenatal exposure.
2. Habituation & Dishabituation
A decrease in responsiveness to repeated stimulation reveals that learning has occurred
- The infant has a memory representation of the repeated, now-familiar stimulus
- The speed with which an infant habituates is believed to reflect the general efficiency of the infant’s processing of information
- Some continuity has been found between these measures in infancy and general cognitive ability later in life
2.1. looking experiment (Maurer & Maurer, 1985)
- 3-months old – pictures of faces
- At the 1st appearance of a photo of a face, her eyes widen and she stares intently
- With 3 more presentations of the same picture, her interest wanes and a yawn appears: habituation
- By its 5th appearance, other things are attracting the baby’s attention
- When a new face finally appears, her interest in something novel is evident: dishabituation
2.2. sucking experiment (Eimas, 1985)
- Allow infant to suck on a dummy that is connected to a computer and measure baseline sucking rate – Present phoneme (/pa/) repeatedly
- Sucking rate first increases and then infant habituates (i.e., returns to baseline sucking rate)
- Present new phoneme (/ba/) – Infant dishabituates (i.e. sucking rate increases)