PSYCH 2090

Question 1

What are the MOST RECENT findings about the function of Infant Directed (ID) Speech?

Answer 1

1. Organizes infant attention to important features of a complex environment.
2. An “unbiased” mechanism: conceptual impact of sound that is driving attention
3. When combined with motion, ID speech facilitates learning and retention of word-object relations.

Question 2

What are the functions of ID speech?

Answer 2

1. Organizers infant attention (facilitates learning of word-objection relations)
2. Communicates emotional state of caregiver (depressed moms)
3. Provides simple, clear examples of language
   - Hyperarticulation

Question 3

What is hyperarticulation? (with reference to ID speech)

Answer 3

Moving vowel sounds more distinct from each other when using ID-speech

Question 4

Conclusions of ID Speech?

Answer 4

1. Modulates infant’s state of arousal
2. Provides opportunities for social learning of emotion.
3. Facilitates learning associations between objects and words.

Question 5

ID of Depressed Mothers?

Answer 5

1. Peter Kaplan: cross-modal associative transfer paradigm (speech predicts face, infants do not learn from depressed mothers speech)
2. If mom is depressed the babies don’t habituate to mothers voice.
3. If mom is not depressed and the baby is given moms speech (you are surprised)

This tells us it is not about the babies.

Question 6

What are the results of ID speech and Depressed mothers?

Answer 6

Tells us that it is not the babies:
1. Nobody learns when there is a depressed voice.
2. Everybody learns when there is not a depressed voice.

Question 7

What is the statistical structure of parental speech in response to babbling?

Answer 7

Statistical structure:
What are the patterns in the speech and why are they significant?

Compared parental speech that was contingent and non-contingent on babbling
30 minute unstructured play session

Question 8

What is the Top-Down approach?

Answer 8

Infants have a predetermined understanding of goals and intentions.
- Why: making sense of others’ actions is adaptive, no explicit teaching of intentions
-Example: Woodward study of intention understanding

Question 9

What is statistical regularity?

Answer 9

A pattern that may form predictions or expectations about what other people are doing (very bottom up interpretation)

Question 10

What happened in the study with Dr. Woodward and the cloth + object?

Answer 10

When doctor touches other cloth (one that wasn’t touched multiple times before), represents that baby knows.

• Babies will dishabituated when you touch new object
  Reaching for same toy in other location/ cloth = babies don’t care
  -Babies only care when you reach for a different object

So it’s about changing the object: represents that babies knows when people are changing their goal (reaching for a new object)
Perceptual movement may also impact this: predetermined knowledge that is shown that babies dishabituation

Question 11

What is the Bottom-Up explanation to the cloth and object experiment?

Answer 11

Our actions are highly predictable. Percieve strucutre of others actions. Find regularities. Does intention coincide with pattern of behavior (Baldwin action/ intention studies)
- video with everyday actions (opening fridge, etc.) videos were frozen (interrupted)

Question 12

What did Baldwin’s Experiment from the article “Infants Parse Dynamic Action” find?

Answer 12

The results showed no significant preference for either type of video, supporting the conclusion that infants’ increased interest in interrupting videos in Study 1 was due to their sensitivity to the disruption of intentional actions rather than inherent salience.

Question 13

What occurred in Baldwin’s Experiment from the article “Infants Parse Dynamic Action”?

Answer 13

There was 2 studies done in this experiment to determine is infants parse ongoing behavior along boundaries correlated with intentions.
Study 1: infants were familiarized with sequences of continuous everyday actions. Following familiarization, they were shown test videos where action was paused either at points where an intention was completed or in the midst of an ongoing action.
- Infants showed renewed interest (longer looking times) for videos where the action was interrupted in the midst of an ongoing action.
- Suggesting they detect disruptions in the expected flow of intentional actions.

Study 2: Aimed to rule out the possibility that infants’ increased interest in interrupting test videos was due to basic salience differences, between the 2 types of test videos, rather than ability to parse action. The results showed no significant preference for either type of video, supporting the conclusion that infants increased interest in interrupting videos.

Question 14

Top-down explanation for infants ability to parse ongoing behavior?

Answer 14

A top-down explanation for infants’ ability to parse ongoing behavior would suggest that infants come equipped with some innate, predetermined knowledge or cognitive structures that help them understand and segment actions. This perspective might argue that humans are born with certain predispositions or cognitive frameworks that guide our interpretation of social and physical cues, allowing even very young infants to parse complex actions into meaningful units.

Question 15

Bottom-Up explanation for infants ability to parse ongoing behavior?

Answer 15

A bottom-up explanation would focus on the role of the environment and sensory experiences in shaping infants’ abilities to parse ongoing behavior. From this viewpoint, infants learn to segment actions through repeated exposure to and interaction with the world around them. They might notice regularities and patterns in the actions they observe, gradually learning to anticipate and recognize the boundaries between different actions based on their perceptual experiences.

Question 16

What occurred in Meltzoff & Brooks Experiment from the article “The development of gaze following and its relation to language”?

Answer 16

They found that by 10 and 11 months, babies were more likely to follow the adult’s gaze when the adult’s eyes were open, showing they understood that open eyes mean the adult is looking at something.

At 9 months, babies didn’t make this distinction. Interestingly, the study also found that babies who were better at gaze following at 10-11 months tended to have better language skills at 18 months.

This suggests that being good at understanding where others are looking might help babies learn to communicate with words and gestures.

Question 17

What occurred in Scarf Experiment from the article “Social Evaluation or Simple Association? Simple Associations May Explain Moral Reasoning in Infants”?

Answer 17

The study by Damian Scarf and colleagues challenges previous research suggesting that infants have an innate moral compass allowing them to evaluate others as good or bad based on their actions (questions Hamlin study).

• Additionally, when both characters were associated with bouncing, infants showed no preference, indicating that their choices were likely based on the positive or negative associations rather than on moral evaluations of the characters’ actions.

-This study suggests that infants’ preferences in the original experiments might not reflect innate moral judgments but could instead be based on simpler cognitive processes like associating characters with positive or negative outcomes. This challenges the notion that infants have an innate ability to morally evaluate individuals based on their actions and emphasizes the need for careful explanations of infant behavior that do not attribute complex cognitive abilities to them prematurely.

Question 18

What occurred in Hamlin’s Experiment from the article “Social Evaluation by preverbal infants”?

Answer 18

1. In the first experiment, infants watched as one character (the “helper”) helped another character (the “climber”) climb a hill, while another character (the “hinderer”) prevented the climber from climbing. After viewing these interactions, infants overwhelmingly chose the helper over the hinderer, indicating they preferred individuals who helped others.
2. To ensure that infants’ preferences were based on social behavior rather than physical aspects of the actions (such as upward vs. downward movement), a second experiment was conducted. In this experiment, the helper and hinderer interacted with an inanimate object rather than the climber. In this context, infants showed no significant preference for the character pushing the object uphill (the helper) over the one pushing it downhill (the hinderer), suggesting that infants’ preferences in the first experiment were based on the social nature of the actions rather than physical properties of the movements.
3. A third experiment further explored infants’ social evaluations by comparing their preferences between a neutral character and a valenced character (either the helper or the hinderer). Infants preferred the helper over the neutral character and the neutral character over the hinderer, demonstrating both positive evaluations of helpful behavior and negative evaluations of hindering behavior.

Overall suggesting that even before infants speak, they can evaluate individuals based on their actions towards others, preferring those who help and avoiding those who hinder. This capacity might be foundational for moral thought and action, indicating that the ability to make social evaluations is present very early in human development.