101
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Kosie JE, Lew-Williams C. Open Science Considerations for Descriptive Research in Developmental Science. INFANT AND CHILD DEVELOPMENT 2024; 33:e2377. [PMID: 38389731 PMCID: PMC10881201 DOI: 10.1002/icd.2377] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/07/2021] [Accepted: 09/09/2022] [Indexed: 02/24/2024]
Abstract
Descriptive developmental research seeks to document, describe, and analyze the conditions under which infants and children live and learn. Here, we articulate how open-science practices can be incorporated into descriptive research to increase its transparency, reliability, and replicability. To date, most open-science practices have been oriented toward experimental rather than descriptive studies, and it can be confusing to figure out how to translate open-science practices (e.g., preregistration) for research that is more descriptive in nature. We discuss a number of unique considerations for descriptive developmental research, taking inspiration from existing open-science practices and providing examples from recent and ongoing studies. By embracing a scientific culture where descriptive research and open science coexist productively, developmental science will be better positioned to generate comprehensive theories of development and understand variability in development across communities and cultures.
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102
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Seidl AH, Indarjit M, Borovsky A. Touch to learn: Multisensory input supports word learning and processing. Dev Sci 2024; 27:e13419. [PMID: 37291692 PMCID: PMC10704002 DOI: 10.1111/desc.13419] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/10/2022] [Revised: 04/14/2023] [Accepted: 05/22/2023] [Indexed: 06/10/2023]
Abstract
Infants experience language in rich multisensory environments. For example, they may first be exposed to the word applesauce while touching, tasting, smelling, and seeing applesauce. In three experiments using different methods we asked whether the number of distinct senses linked with the semantic features of objects would impact word recognition and learning. Specifically, in Experiment 1 we asked whether words linked with more multisensory experiences were learned earlier than words linked fewer multisensory experiences. In Experiment 2, we asked whether 2-year-olds' known words linked with more multisensory experiences were better recognized than those linked with fewer. Finally, in Experiment 3, we taught 2-year-olds labels for novel objects that were linked with either just visual or visual and tactile experiences and asked whether this impacted their ability to learn the new label-to-object mappings. Results converge to support an account in which richer multisensory experiences better support word learning. We discuss two pathways through which rich multisensory experiences might support word learning.
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Affiliation(s)
- Amanda H Seidl
- Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, USA
| | - Michelle Indarjit
- Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, USA
| | - Arielle Borovsky
- Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, USA
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103
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Kanngiesser P, Sunderarajan J, Woike JK. Cheating and the effect of promises in Indian and German children. Child Dev 2024; 95:16-23. [PMID: 37307385 DOI: 10.1111/cdev.13952] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/14/2023]
Abstract
Cheating is harmful to others and society at large. Promises have been shown to increase honesty in children, but their effectiveness has not been compared between different cultural contexts. In a study (2019) with 7- to 12-year-olds (N = 406, 48% female, middle-class), voluntary promises reduced cheating in Indian, but not in German children. Children in both contexts cheated, but cheating rates were lower in Germany than in India. In both contexts, cheating decreased with age in the (no-promise) control condition and was unaffected by age in the promise condition. These findings suggest that there may exist a threshold beyond which cheating cannot be further reduced by promises. This opens new research avenues on how children navigate honesty and promise norms.
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Affiliation(s)
- Patricia Kanngiesser
- School of Psychology, University of Plymouth, Plymouth, UK
- Faculty of Education and Psychology, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany
| | - Jahnavi Sunderarajan
- Faculty of Education and Psychology, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany
- Department of Social Sciences, Flame University, Pune, India
| | - Jan K Woike
- School of Psychology, University of Plymouth, Plymouth, UK
- Center for Adaptive Rationality, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany
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104
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Holt S, Fan JE, Barner D. Creating ad hoc graphical representations of number. Cognition 2024; 242:105665. [PMID: 37992512 DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2023.105665] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/04/2023] [Revised: 11/09/2023] [Accepted: 11/11/2023] [Indexed: 11/24/2023]
Abstract
The ability to communicate about exact number is critical to many modern human practices spanning science, industry, and politics. Although some early numeral systems used 1-to-1 correspondence (e.g., 'IIII' to represent 4), most systems provide compact representations via more arbitrary conventions (e.g., '7' and 'VII'). When people are unable to rely on conventional numerals, however, what strategies do they initially use to communicate number? Across three experiments, participants used pictures to communicate about visual arrays of objects containing 1-16 items, either by producing freehand drawings or combining sets of visual tokens. We analyzed how the pictures they produced varied as a function of communicative need (Experiment 1), spatial regularities in the arrays (Experiment 2), and visual properties of tokens (Experiment 3). In Experiment 1, we found that participants often expressed number in the form of 1-to-1 representations, but sometimes also exploited the configuration of sets. In Experiment 2, this strategy of using configural cues was exaggerated when sets were especially large, and when the cues were predictably correlated with number. Finally, in Experiment 3, participants readily adopted salient numerical features of objects (e.g., four-leaf clover) and generally combined them in a cumulative-additive manner. Taken together, these findings corroborate historical evidence that humans exploit correlates of number in the external environment - such as shape, configural cues, or 1-to-1 correspondence - as the basis for innovating more abstract number representations.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sebastian Holt
- Department of Psychology, University of California, San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA.
| | - Judith E Fan
- Department of Psychology, University of California, San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA; Department of Psychology, Stanford University, 450 Jane Stanford Way, Stanford, CA 94305, USA
| | - David Barner
- Department of Psychology, University of California, San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA; Department of Linguistics, University of California, San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA
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105
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Fränken JP, Valentin S, Lucas CG, Bramley NR. Naïve information aggregation in human social learning. Cognition 2024; 242:105633. [PMID: 37897881 DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2023.105633] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/21/2023] [Revised: 09/27/2023] [Accepted: 10/02/2023] [Indexed: 10/30/2023]
Abstract
To glean accurate information from social networks, people should distinguish evidence from hearsay. For example, when testimony depends on others' beliefs as much as on first-hand information, there is a danger of evidence becoming inflated or ignored as it passes from person to person. We compare human inferences with an idealized rational account that anticipates and adjusts for these dependencies by evaluating peers' communications with respect to the underlying communication pathways. We report on three multi-player experiments examining the dynamics of both mixed human-artificial and all-human social networks. Our analyses suggest that most human inferences are best described by a naïve learning account that is insensitive to known or inferred dependencies between network peers. Consequently, we find that simulated social learners that assume their peers behave rationally make systematic judgment errors when reasoning on the basis of actual human communications. We suggest human groups learn collectively through naïve signaling and aggregation that is computationally efficient and surprisingly robust. Overall, our results challenge the idea that everyday social inference is well captured by idealized rational accounts and provide insight into the conditions under which collective wisdom can emerge from social interactions.
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Affiliation(s)
- J-Philipp Fränken
- Stanford University, United States of America; The University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom.
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106
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Li W, Germine LT, Mehr SA, Srinivasan M, Hartshorne J. Developmental psychologists should adopt citizen science to improve generalization and reproducibility. INFANT AND CHILD DEVELOPMENT 2024; 33:e2348. [PMID: 38515737 PMCID: PMC10957098 DOI: 10.1002/icd.2348] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/06/2021] [Accepted: 05/17/2022] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Abstract
Widespread failures of replication and generalization are, ironically, a scientific triumph, in that they confirm the fundamental metascientific theory that underlies our field. Generalizable and replicable findings require testing large numbers of subjects from a wide range of demographics with a large, randomly-sampled stimulus set, and using a variety of experimental parameters. Because few studies accomplish any of this, meta-scientists predict that findings will frequently fail to replicate or generalize. We argue that to be more robust and replicable, developmental psychology needs to find a mechanism for collecting data at greater scale and from more diverse populations. Luckily, this mechanism already exists: Citizen science, in which large numbers of uncompensated volunteers provide data. While best-known for its contributions to astronomy and ecology, citizen science has also produced major findings in neuroscience and psychology, and increasingly in developmental psychology. We provide examples, address practical challenges, discuss limitations, and compare to other methods of obtaining large datasets. Ultimately, we argue that the range of studies where it makes sense *not* to use citizen science is steadily dwindling.
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Affiliation(s)
- Wei Li
- Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA, USA
| | - Laura Thi Germine
- McLean Hospital, Belmont, MA, USA
- Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Cambridge, MA
| | - Samuel A. Mehr
- Data Science Initiative, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
- School of Psychology, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand
| | | | - Joshua Hartshorne
- Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA, USA
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107
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Schwering SC, Jacobs CL, Montemayor J, MacDonald MC. Lexico-syntactic constraints influence verbal working memory in sentence-like lists. Mem Cognit 2023:10.3758/s13421-023-01496-2. [PMID: 38129629 DOI: 10.3758/s13421-023-01496-2] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 11/11/2023] [Indexed: 12/23/2023]
Abstract
We test predictions from the language emergent perspective on verbal working memory that lexico-syntactic constraints should support both item and order memory. In natural language, long-term knowledge of lexico-syntactic patterns involving part of speech, verb biases, and noun animacy support language comprehension and production. In three experiments, participants were presented with randomly generated dative-like sentences or lists in which part of speech, verb biases, and animacy of a single word were manipulated. Participants were more likely to recall words in the correct position when presented with a verb over a noun in the verb position, a good dative verb over an intransitive verb in the verb position, and an animate noun over an inanimate noun in the subject noun position. These results demonstrate that interactions between words and their context in the form of lexico-syntactic constraints influence verbal working memory.
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108
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Ahmad Z, Kelly KR, Freud E. Reduced perception-action dissociation in children with amblyopia. Neuropsychologia 2023; 191:108738. [PMID: 38007150 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2023.108738] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/31/2023] [Revised: 11/08/2023] [Accepted: 11/19/2023] [Indexed: 11/27/2023]
Abstract
The functional distinction between vision-for-perception and vision-for-action is a key aspect of understanding the primate visual system. While this dissociation has been well-established in adulthood, its development and dependence on typical visual experience remain unclear. To address these questions, we examined two groups of children: typically developed children and those with amblyopia, who presumably have a sub-optimal visual experience. The Ponzo illusion, known to impact perception but not visuomotor behaviors across age groups, was employed to assess the extent of dissociation. Participants engaged in two tasks involving the Ponzo illusion: a grasping task (vision-for-action) and a manual estimation task (vision-for-perception), with objects placed on the "close" and "far" surfaces of the illusion. Typically developed children displayed grasping movements that were unaffected by the illusion, as their grasping apertures were scaled based on object size, independent of its location. In contrast, children with amblyopia exhibited a clear susceptibility to the illusion, showing larger apertures for objects placed on the 'far' surface of the illusion, and smaller apertures for objects placed on the 'close' surface. Interestingly, both groups of children demonstrated similar susceptibility to the illusion during the perceptual task, with objects placed on the far surface being perceived as longer compared to objects placed on the close surface. These findings shed light on the impact of atypical visual development on the emergence of the dissociation between perception and action, highlighting the crucial role of typical visual experience in establishing this distinction.
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Affiliation(s)
- Zoha Ahmad
- Department of Biology, York University, Canada; The Centre for Vision Research, York University, Canada.
| | - Krista R Kelly
- School of Optometry and Vision Science, University of Waterloo, Canada; Retina Foundation of the Southwest, Dallas, USA
| | - Erez Freud
- The Centre for Vision Research, York University, Canada; Department of Psychology, York University, Canada
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109
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Bosco A, Sanz Diez P, Filippini M, De Vitis M, Fattori P. A focus on the multiple interfaces between action and perception and their neural correlates. Neuropsychologia 2023; 191:108722. [PMID: 37931747 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2023.108722] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/26/2023] [Revised: 10/13/2023] [Accepted: 10/31/2023] [Indexed: 11/08/2023]
Abstract
Successful behaviour relies on the appropriate interplay between action and perception. The well-established dorsal and ventral stream theories depicted two distinct functional pathways for the processes of action and perception, respectively. In physiological conditions, the two pathways closely cooperate in order to produce successful adaptive behaviour. As the coupling between perception and action exists, this requires an interface that is responsible for a common reading of the two functions. Several studies have proposed different types of perception and action interfaces, suggesting their role in the creation of the shared interaction channel. In the present review, we describe three possible perception and action interfaces: i) the motor code, including common coding approaches, ii) attention, and iii) object affordance; we highlight their potential neural correlates. From this overview, a recurrent neural substrate that underlies all these interface functions appears to be crucial: the parieto-frontal circuit. This network is involved in the mirror mechanism which underlies the perception and action interfaces identified as common coding and motor code theories. The same network is also involved in the spotlight of attention and in the encoding of potential action towards objects; these are manifested in the perception and action interfaces for common attention and object affordance, respectively. Within this framework, most studies were dedicated to the description of the role of the inferior parietal lobule; growing evidence, however, suggests that the superior parietal lobule also plays a crucial role in the interplay between action and perception. The present review proposes a novel model that is inclusive of the superior parietal regions and their relative contribution to the different action and perception interfaces.
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Affiliation(s)
- A Bosco
- Department of Biomedical and Neuromotor Sciences, University of Bologna, Piazza di Porta San Donato 2, 40126, Bologna, Italy; Alma Mater Research Institute For Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (Alma Human AI), University of Bologna, Via Galliera 3 Bologna, 40121, Bologna, Italy.
| | - P Sanz Diez
- Carl Zeiss Vision International GmbH, Turnstrasse 27, 73430, Aalen, Germany; Institute for Ophthalmic Research, Eberhard Karls University Tuebingen, Elfriede-Aulhorn-Straße 7, 72076, Tuebingen, Germany
| | - M Filippini
- Department of Biomedical and Neuromotor Sciences, University of Bologna, Piazza di Porta San Donato 2, 40126, Bologna, Italy; Alma Mater Research Institute For Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (Alma Human AI), University of Bologna, Via Galliera 3 Bologna, 40121, Bologna, Italy
| | - M De Vitis
- Department of Biomedical and Neuromotor Sciences, University of Bologna, Piazza di Porta San Donato 2, 40126, Bologna, Italy
| | - P Fattori
- Department of Biomedical and Neuromotor Sciences, University of Bologna, Piazza di Porta San Donato 2, 40126, Bologna, Italy; Alma Mater Research Institute For Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (Alma Human AI), University of Bologna, Via Galliera 3 Bologna, 40121, Bologna, Italy
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110
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Adibpour P, Hochmann JR. Infants' understanding of the causal power of agents and tools. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2023; 120:e2309669120. [PMID: 38064512 PMCID: PMC10723150 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2309669120] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/30/2023] [Accepted: 11/01/2023] [Indexed: 12/17/2023] Open
Abstract
Tools are objects that are manipulated by agents with the intention to cause an effect in the world. We show that the cognitive capacity to understand tools is present in young infants, even if these tools produce arbitrary, causally opaque effects. In experiments 1-2, we used pupillometry to show that 8-mo-old infants infer an invisible causal contact to account for the-otherwise unexplained-motion of a ball. In experiments 3, we probed 8-mo-old infants' account of a state change event (flickering of a cube) that lies outside of the explanatory power of intuitive physics. Infants repeatedly watched an intentional agent launch a ball behind an occluder. After a short delay, a cube, positioned at the other end of the occluder began flickering. Rare unoccluded events served to probe infants' representation of what happened behind the occluder. Infants exhibited larger pupil dilation, signaling more surprise, when the ball stopped before touching the cube, than when it contacted the cube, suggesting that infants inferred that the cause of the state change was contact between the ball and the cube. This effect was canceled in experiment 4, when an inanimate sphere replaced the intentional agent. Altogether, results suggest that, in the infants' eyes, a ball (an inanimate object) has the power to cause an arbitrary state change, but only if it inherits this power from an intentional agent. Eight-month-olds are thus capable of representing complex event structures, involving an intentional agent causing a change with a tool.
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Affiliation(s)
- Parvaneh Adibpour
- Université Paris Cité, NeuroDiderot Unit UMR1141, INSERM, Paris75019, France
- Université Paris Saclay, Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique, NeuroSpin, Unité de recherche en NeuroImagerie Applicative Clinique et Translationnelle, Gif-sur-YvetteF-91191, France
| | - Jean-Rémy Hochmann
- CNRSUMR5229–Institut des Sciences Cognitives Marc Jeannerod, Bron69675, France
- Université Lyon 1 Claude Bernard, Villeurbanne69100, France
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111
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Linsley D, Serre T. Fixing the problems of deep neural networks will require better training data and learning algorithms. Behav Brain Sci 2023; 46:e400. [PMID: 38054333 DOI: 10.1017/s0140525x23001589] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/07/2023]
Abstract
Bowers et al. argue that deep neural networks (DNNs) are poor models of biological vision because they often learn to rival human accuracy by relying on strategies that differ markedly from those of humans. We show that this problem is worsening as DNNs are becoming larger-scale and increasingly more accurate, and prescribe methods for building DNNs that can reliably model biological vision.
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Affiliation(s)
- Drew Linsley
- Department of Cognitive Linguistic & Psychological Sciences, Carney Institute for Brain Science, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA ://sites.brown.edu/drewlinsleyhttps://serre-lab.clps.brown.edu
| | - Thomas Serre
- Department of Cognitive Linguistic & Psychological Sciences, Carney Institute for Brain Science, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA ://sites.brown.edu/drewlinsleyhttps://serre-lab.clps.brown.edu
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112
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Bergey CA, Yurovsky D. Using contrastive inferences to learn about new words and categories. Cognition 2023; 241:105597. [PMID: 37678085 DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2023.105597] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/20/2022] [Revised: 08/03/2023] [Accepted: 08/08/2023] [Indexed: 09/09/2023]
Abstract
In the face of unfamiliar language or objects, description is one cue people can use to learn about both. Beyond narrowing potential referents to those that match a descriptor (e.g., "tall"), people could infer that a described object is one that contrasts with other relevant objects of the same type (e.g., "the tall cup" contrasts with another, shorter cup). This contrast may be in relation to other objects present in the environment (this cup is tall among present cups) or to the referent's category (this cup is tall for a cup in general). In three experiments, we investigate whether people use such contrastive inferences from description to learn new word-referent mappings and learn about new categories' feature distributions. People use contrastive inferences to guide their referent choice, though size - and not color - adjectives prompt them to consistently choose the contrastive target over alternatives (Experiment 1). People also use color and size description to infer that a novel object is atypical of its category (Experiments 2 and 3): utterances like "the blue toma" prompt people to infer that tomas are less likely to be blue in general. However, these two inferences do not trade off substantially: people infer a described referent is atypical even when the descriptor was necessary to establish reference. We model these experiments in the Rational Speech Act (RSA) framework and find that it predicts both of these inferences. Overall, people are able to use contrastive inferences from description to resolve reference and make inferences about a novel object's category, letting them learn more about new things than literal meaning alone allows.
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113
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Zhang Z, Chen T, Liu Y, Wang C, Zhao K, Liu CH, Fu X. Decoding the temporal representation of facial expression in face-selective regions. Neuroimage 2023; 283:120442. [PMID: 37926217 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2023.120442] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/10/2023] [Revised: 10/23/2023] [Accepted: 11/02/2023] [Indexed: 11/07/2023] Open
Abstract
The ability of humans to discern facial expressions in a timely manner typically relies on distributed face-selective regions for rapid neural computations. To study the time course in regions of interest for this process, we used magnetoencephalography (MEG) to measure neural responses participants viewed facial expressions depicting seven types of emotions (happiness, sadness, anger, disgust, fear, surprise, and neutral). Analysis of the time-resolved decoding of neural responses in face-selective sources within the inferior parietal cortex (IP-faces), lateral occipital cortex (LO-faces), fusiform gyrus (FG-faces), and posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS-faces) revealed that facial expressions were successfully classified starting from ∼100 to 150 ms after stimulus onset. Interestingly, the LO-faces and IP-faces showed greater accuracy than FG-faces and pSTS-faces. To examine the nature of the information processed in these face-selective regions, we entered with facial expression stimuli into a convolutional neural network (CNN) to perform similarity analyses against human neural responses. The results showed that neural responses in the LO-faces and IP-faces, starting ∼100 ms after the stimuli, were more strongly correlated with deep representations of emotional categories than with image level information from the input images. Additionally, we observed a relationship between the behavioral performance and the neural responses in the LO-faces and IP-faces, but not in the FG-faces and lpSTS-faces. Together, these results provided a comprehensive picture of the time course and nature of information involved in facial expression discrimination across multiple face-selective regions, which advances our understanding of how the human brain processes facial expressions.
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Affiliation(s)
- Zhihao Zhang
- State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China; Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China
| | - Tong Chen
- Chongqing Key Laboratory of Non-Linear Circuit and Intelligent Information Processing, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China; Chongqing Key Laboratory of Artificial Intelligence and Service Robot Control Technology, Chongqing 400715, China
| | - Ye Liu
- State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China; Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China
| | - Chongyang Wang
- Department of Computer Science and Technology, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
| | - Ke Zhao
- State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China; Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China.
| | - Chang Hong Liu
- Department of Psychology, Bournemouth University, Dorset, United Kingdom
| | - Xiaolan Fu
- State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China; Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China.
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114
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Pinheiro-Chagas P, Sava-Segal C, Akkol S, Daitch A, Parvizi J. Spatiotemporal dynamics of successive activations across the human brain during simple arithmetic processing. BIORXIV : THE PREPRINT SERVER FOR BIOLOGY 2023:2023.11.22.568334. [PMID: 38045319 PMCID: PMC10690273 DOI: 10.1101/2023.11.22.568334] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/05/2023]
Abstract
Previous neuroimaging studies have offered unique insights about the spatial organization of activations and deactivations across the brain, however these were not powered to explore the exact timing of events at the subsecond scale combined with precise anatomical source information at the level of individual brains. As a result, we know little about the order of engagement across different brain regions during a given cognitive task. Using experimental arithmetic tasks as a prototype for human-unique symbolic processing, we recorded directly across 10,076 brain sites in 85 human subjects (52% female) using intracranial electroencephalography (iEEG). Our data revealed a remarkably distributed change of activity in almost half of the sampled sites. Notably, an orderly successive activation of a set of brain regions - anatomically consistent across subjects-was observed in individual brains. Furthermore, the temporal order of activations across these sites was replicable across subjects and trials. Moreover, the degree of functional connectivity between the sites decreased as a function of temporal distance between regions, suggesting that information is partially leaked or transformed along the processing chain. Furthermore, in each activated region, distinct neuronal populations with opposite activity patterns during target and control conditions were juxtaposed in an anatomically orderly manner. Our study complements the prior imaging studies by providing hitherto unknown information about the timing of events in the brain during arithmetic processing. Such findings can be a basis for developing mechanistic computational models of human-specific cognitive symbolic systems. Significance statement Our study elucidates the spatiotemporal dynamics and anatomical specificity of brain activations across >10,000 sites during arithmetic tasks, as captured by intracranial EEG. We discovered an orderly, successive activation of brain regions, consistent across individuals, and a decrease in functional connectivity as a function of temporal distance between regions. Our findings provide unprecedented insights into the sequence of cognitive processing and regional interactions, offering a novel perspective for enhancing computational models of cognitive symbolic systems.
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115
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Maruya A, Zaidi Q. Perceptual Transitions between Object Rigidity & Non-rigidity: Competition and cooperation between motion-energy, feature-tracking and shape-based priors. BIORXIV : THE PREPRINT SERVER FOR BIOLOGY 2023:2023.04.07.536067. [PMID: 37503257 PMCID: PMC10369874 DOI: 10.1101/2023.04.07.536067] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 07/29/2023]
Abstract
Why do moving objects appear rigid when projected retinal images are deformed non-rigidly? We used rotating rigid objects that can appear rigid or non-rigid to test whether shape features contribute to rigidity perception. When two circular rings were rigidly linked at an angle and jointly rotated at moderate speeds, observers reported that the rings wobbled and were not linked rigidly but rigid rotation was reported at slow speeds. When gaps, paint or vertices were added, the rings appeared rigidly rotating even at moderate speeds. At high speeds, all configurations appeared non-rigid. Salient features thus contribute to rigidity at slow and moderate speeds, but not at high speeds. Simulated responses of arrays of motion-energy cells showed that motion flow vectors are predominantly orthogonal to the contours of the rings, not parallel to the rotation direction. A convolutional neural network trained to distinguish flow patterns for wobbling versus rotation, gave a high probability of wobbling for the motion-energy flows. However, the CNN gave high probabilities of rotation for motion flows generated by tracking features with arrays of MT pattern-motion cells and corner detectors. In addition, circular rings can appear to spin and roll despite the absence of any sensory evidence, and this illusion is prevented by vertices, gaps, and painted segments, showing the effects of rotational symmetry and shape. Combining CNN outputs that give greater weight to motion energy at fast speeds and to feature tracking at slow, with the shape-based priors for wobbling and rolling, explained rigid and nonrigid percepts across shapes and speeds (R2=0.95). The results demonstrate how cooperation and competition between different neuronal classes leads to specific states of visual perception and to transitions between the states.
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Affiliation(s)
- Akihito Maruya
- Graduate Center for Vision Research, State University of New York, 33 West 42nd St, New York, NY 10036
| | - Qasim Zaidi
- Graduate Center for Vision Research, State University of New York, 33 West 42nd St, New York, NY 10036
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116
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Ramírez-Moreno MA, Cruz-Garza JG, Acharya A, Chatufale G, Witt W, Gelok D, Reza G, Contreras-Vidal JL. Brain-to-brain communication during musical improvisation: a performance case study. F1000Res 2023; 11:989. [PMID: 37809054 PMCID: PMC10558998 DOI: 10.12688/f1000research.123515.3] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 11/01/2023] [Indexed: 10/10/2023] Open
Abstract
Understanding and predicting others' actions in ecological settings is an important research goal in social neuroscience. Here, we deployed a mobile brain-body imaging (MoBI) methodology to analyze inter-brain communication between professional musicians during a live jazz performance. Specifically, bispectral analysis was conducted to assess the synchronization of scalp electroencephalographic (EEG) signals from three expert musicians during a three-part 45 minute jazz performance, during which a new musician joined every five minutes. The bispectrum was estimated for all musician dyads, electrode combinations, and five frequency bands. The results showed higher bispectrum in the beta and gamma frequency bands (13-50 Hz) when more musicians performed together, and when they played a musical phrase synchronously. Positive bispectrum amplitude changes were found approximately three seconds prior to the identified synchronized performance events suggesting preparatory cortical activity predictive of concerted behavioral action. Moreover, a higher amount of synchronized EEG activity, across electrode regions, was observed as more musicians performed, with inter-brain synchronization between the temporal, parietal, and occipital regions the most frequent. Increased synchrony between the musicians' brain activity reflects shared multi-sensory processing and movement intention in a musical improvisation task.
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Affiliation(s)
- Mauricio A. Ramírez-Moreno
- School of Engineering and Sciences, Mechatronics Department, Tecnologico de Monterrey, Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, 64849, Mexico
- Noninvasive Brain-Machine Interface Systems Laboratory, NSF IUCRC BRAIN, University of Houston, Houston, Texas, 77004, USA
| | - Jesús G. Cruz-Garza
- Noninvasive Brain-Machine Interface Systems Laboratory, NSF IUCRC BRAIN, University of Houston, Houston, Texas, 77004, USA
| | - Akanksha Acharya
- Noninvasive Brain-Machine Interface Systems Laboratory, NSF IUCRC BRAIN, University of Houston, Houston, Texas, 77004, USA
| | - Girija Chatufale
- Noninvasive Brain-Machine Interface Systems Laboratory, NSF IUCRC BRAIN, University of Houston, Houston, Texas, 77004, USA
- University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, 90095, USA
| | - Woody Witt
- Moores School of Music, University of Houston, Houston, Texas, 77004, USA
- Houston Community College, Houston, Texas, 77004, USA
| | - Dan Gelok
- Moores School of Music, University of Houston, Houston, Texas, 77004, USA
| | | | - José L. Contreras-Vidal
- Noninvasive Brain-Machine Interface Systems Laboratory, NSF IUCRC BRAIN, University of Houston, Houston, Texas, 77004, USA
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117
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Biran M, Tubul-Lavy G, Novogrodsky R. Atypical phonological processes in naming errors of children with language impairment. CLINICAL LINGUISTICS & PHONETICS 2023; 37:996-1012. [PMID: 36214077 DOI: 10.1080/02699206.2022.2126331] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/05/2021] [Revised: 09/21/2022] [Accepted: 09/10/2022] [Indexed: 06/16/2023]
Abstract
The current study explored the characteristics of phonological errors of preschool children with DLD (Developmental Language Disorder), distinguishing between typical versus atypical phonological processes in segmental, syllabic and word levels. The analysis included 87 responses of words with phonological errors from a naming test, produced by 13 preschool children with DLD, aged 4;4-6;3 years. These responses included 166 phonological processes, which were classified into typical and atypical processes at the levels of: segments, syllables, and prosodic words. The findings revealed that 70% of the phonological processes were atypical. Furthermore, ten children produced more atypical processes, and there were more atypical than typical processes in segmental and word levels. It is suggested that some children with DLD represent phonological processes that are similar to those that children with speech and sound disorders produce. Therefore, clinically, the results emphasise the importance of analysing the typical and atypical characteristics of phonological errors as part of language assessment.
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Affiliation(s)
- Michal Biran
- Department of Communication Disorders, Ariel University, Ariel, Israel
| | - Gila Tubul-Lavy
- Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Ono Academic College, Kiryat Ono, Israel
| | - Rama Novogrodsky
- Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel
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118
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Spit S, Geambașu A, Renswoude DV, Blom E, Fikkert P, Hunnius S, Junge C, Verhagen J, Visser I, Wijnen F, Levelt CC. Robustness of the cognitive gains in 7-month-old bilingual infants: A close multi-center replication of Kovács and Mehler (2009). Dev Sci 2023; 26:e13377. [PMID: 36851852 DOI: 10.1111/desc.13377] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/09/2022] [Revised: 01/30/2023] [Accepted: 02/04/2023] [Indexed: 03/01/2023]
Abstract
We present an exact replication of Experiment 2 from Kovács and Mehler's 2009 study, which showed that 7-month-old infants who are raised bilingually exhibit a cognitive advantage. In the experiment, a sound cue, following an AAB or ABB pattern, predicted the appearance of a visual stimulus on the screen. The stimulus appeared on one side of the screen for nine trials and then switched to the other side. In the original experiment, both mono- and bilingual infants anticipated where the visual stimulus would appear during pre-switch trials. However, during post-switch trials, only bilingual children anticipated that the stimulus would appear on the other side of the screen. The authors took this as evidence of a cognitive advantage. Using the exact same materials in combination with novel analysis techniques (Bayesian analyses, mixed effects modeling and cluster based permutation analyses), we assessed the robustness of these findings in four babylabs (N = 98). Our results did not replicate the original findings: although anticipatory looks increased slightly during post-switch trials for both groups, bilingual infants were not better switchers than monolingual infants. After the original experiment, we presented additional trials to examine whether infants associated sound patterns with cued locations, for which we did not find any evidence either. The results highlight the importance of multicenter replications and more fine-grained statistical analyses to better understand child development. HIGHLIGHTS: We carried out an exact replication across four baby labs of the high-impact study by Kovács and Mehler (2009). We did not replicate the findings of the original study, calling into question the robustness of the claim that bilingual infants have enhanced cognitive abilities. After the original experiment, we presented additional trials to examine whether infants correctly associated sound patterns with cued locations, for which we did not find any evidence. The use of novel analysis techniques (Bayesian analyses, mixed effects modeling and cluster based permutation analyses) allowed us to draw better-informed conclusions.
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Affiliation(s)
| | | | | | - Elma Blom
- Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands
- AcqVA Aurora, UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway
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119
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Bohn M, Tessler MH, Kordt C, Hausmann T, Frank MC. An individual differences perspective on pragmatic abilities in the preschool years. Dev Sci 2023; 26:e13401. [PMID: 37089076 DOI: 10.1111/desc.13401] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/13/2022] [Revised: 03/28/2023] [Accepted: 04/05/2023] [Indexed: 04/25/2023]
Abstract
Pragmatic abilities are fundamental to successful language use and learning. Individual differences studies contribute to understanding the psychological processes involved in pragmatic reasoning. Small sample sizes, insufficient measurement tools, and a lack of theoretical precision have hindered progress, however. Three studies addressed these challenges in three- to 5-year-old German-speaking children (N = 228, 121 female). Studies 1 and 2 assessed the psychometric properties of six pragmatics tasks. Study 3 investigated relations among pragmatics tasks and between pragmatics and other cognitive abilities. The tasks were found to measure stable variation between individuals. Via a computational cognitive model, individual differences were traced back to a latent pragmatics construct. This presents the basis for understanding the relations between pragmatics and other cognitive abilities. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: Individual differences in pragmatic abilities are important to understanding variation in language development. Research in this domain lacks a precise theoretical framework and psychometrically high-quality measures. We present six tasks capturing a wide range of pragmatic abilities with excellent re-test reliability. We use a computational cognitive model to provide a substantive theory of individual differences in pragmatic abilities.
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Affiliation(s)
- Manuel Bohn
- Department of Comparative Cultural Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
| | - Michael Henry Tessler
- DeepMind, London, UK
- Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
| | - Clara Kordt
- Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Halle (Saale), Germany
| | - Tom Hausmann
- Brandenburg Medical School Theodor Fontane, Neuruppin, Germany
| | - Michael C Frank
- Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA
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120
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Menn KH, Männel C, Meyer L. Does Electrophysiological Maturation Shape Language Acquisition? PERSPECTIVES ON PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE 2023; 18:1271-1281. [PMID: 36753616 PMCID: PMC10623610 DOI: 10.1177/17456916231151584] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 02/10/2023]
Abstract
Infants master temporal patterns of their native language at a developmental trajectory from slow to fast: Shortly after birth, they recognize the slow acoustic modulations specific to their native language before tuning into faster language-specific patterns between 6 and 12 months of age. We propose here that this trajectory is constrained by neuronal maturation-in particular, the gradual emergence of high-frequency neural oscillations in the infant electroencephalogram. Infants' initial focus on slow prosodic modulations is consistent with the prenatal availability of slow electrophysiological activity (i.e., theta- and delta-band oscillations). Our proposal is consistent with the temporal patterns of infant-directed speech, which initially amplifies slow modulations, approaching the faster modulation range of adult-directed speech only as infants' language has advanced sufficiently. Moreover, our proposal agrees with evidence from premature infants showing maturational age is a stronger predictor of language development than ex utero exposure to speech, indicating that premature infants cannot exploit their earlier availability of speech because of electrophysiological constraints. In sum, we provide a new perspective on language acquisition emphasizing neuronal development as a critical driving force of infants' language development.
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Affiliation(s)
- Katharina H. Menn
- Research Group Language Cycles, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany
- Department of Neuropsychology, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany
- International Max Planck Research School on Neuroscience of Communication: Function, Structure, and Plasticity, Leipzig, Germany
| | - Claudia Männel
- Department of Neuropsychology, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany
- Department of Audiology and Phoniatrics, Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, Germany
| | - Lars Meyer
- Research Group Language Cycles, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany
- Clinic for Phoniatrics and Pedaudiology, University Hospital Münster, Münster, Germany
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121
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Siow S, Gillen NA, Lepădatu I, Plunkett K. Double it up: Vocabulary size comparisons between UK bilingual and monolingual toddlers. INFANCY 2023; 28:1030-1051. [PMID: 37792587 DOI: 10.1111/infa.12562] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/14/2022] [Revised: 09/04/2023] [Accepted: 09/10/2023] [Indexed: 10/06/2023]
Abstract
We compared vocabulary sizes in comprehension and production between bilingual toddlers growing up in the United Kingdom (UK) and age-matched UK English monolinguals (12-36 months old) using parent-report vocabulary questionnaires. We found that bilingual toddlers' vocabulary sizes in English were smaller than the vocabulary sizes of their monolingual peers. Notably, this vocabulary gap was not found when groups were compared on conceptual vocabulary in comprehension. Conceptual scoring also reduced the vocabulary gap in production but group differences were still significant. Bilingual toddlers knew more words than monolinguals when words across their two languages were added together, for both comprehension and production. This large total vocabulary size could be attributed to a high proportion of doublets (cross-linguistic word pairs with the same meaning) in bilinguals' vocabularies. These findings are discussed in relation to language exposure, facilitation from cross-linguistic overlap and maturation constraints on vocabulary size.
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Affiliation(s)
- Serene Siow
- Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
- Department of English, Linguistics & Theatre Studies, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore
| | - Nicola A Gillen
- Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
| | - Irina Lepădatu
- Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
| | - Kim Plunkett
- Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
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122
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Sirois S, Brisson J, Blaser E, Calignano G, Donenfeld J, Hepach R, Hochmann JR, Kaldy Z, Liszkowski U, Mayer M, Ross-Sheehy S, Russo S, Valenza E. The pupil collaboration: A multi-lab, multi-method analysis of goal attribution in infants. Infant Behav Dev 2023; 73:101890. [PMID: 37944367 DOI: 10.1016/j.infbeh.2023.101890] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/09/2022] [Revised: 09/27/2023] [Accepted: 09/27/2023] [Indexed: 11/12/2023]
Abstract
The rise of pupillometry in infant research over the last decade is associated with a variety of methods for data preprocessing and analysis. Although pupil diameter is increasingly recognized as an alternative measure of the popular cumulative looking time approach used in many studies (Jackson & Sirois, 2022), an open question is whether the many approaches used to analyse this variable converge. To this end, we proposed a crowdsourced approach to pupillometry analysis. A dataset from 30 9-month-old infants (15 girls; Mage = 282.9 days, SD = 8.10) was provided to 7 distinct teams for analysis. The data were obtained from infants watching video sequences showing a hand, initially resting between two toys, grabbing one of them (after Woodward, 1998). After habituation, infants were shown (in random order) a sequence of four test events that varied target position and target toy. Results show that looking times reflect primarily the familiar path of the hand, regardless of target toy. Gaze data similarly show this familiarity effect of path. The pupil dilation analyses show that features of pupil baseline measures (duration and temporal location) as well as data retention variation (trial and/or participant) due to different inclusion criteria from the various analysis methods are linked to divergences in findings. Two of the seven teams found no significant findings, whereas the remaining five teams differ in the pattern of findings for main and interaction effects. The discussion proposes guidelines for best practice in the analysis of pupillometry data.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sylvain Sirois
- Département de Psychologie, Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, Canada.
| | - Julie Brisson
- Centre de Recherche sur les fonctionnements et dysfonctionnements psychologiques (EA7475), Université de Rouen Normandie, France
| | - Erik Blaser
- Department of Psychology, University of Massachusetts Boston, USA
| | - Giulia Calignano
- Department of Developmental and Social Psychology, University of Padova, Italy
| | - Jamie Donenfeld
- Department of Psychology, University of Massachusetts Boston, USA
| | - Robert Hepach
- Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, UK
| | - Jean-Rémy Hochmann
- CNRS UMR5229 - Institut des Sciences Cognitives Marc Jeannerod, Université Lyon 1, France
| | - Zsuzsa Kaldy
- Department of Psychology, University of Massachusetts Boston, USA
| | - Ulf Liszkowski
- Department of Developmental Psychology, University of Hamburg, Germany
| | - Marlena Mayer
- Department of Developmental Psychology, University of Hamburg, Germany
| | | | - Sofia Russo
- Department of Developmental and Social Psychology, University of Padova, Italy
| | - Eloisa Valenza
- Department of Developmental and Social Psychology, University of Padova, Italy
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123
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Casey K, Potter CE, Lew-Williams C, Wojcik EH. Moving beyond "nouns in the lab": Using naturalistic data to understand why infants' first words include uh-oh and hi. Dev Psychol 2023; 59:2162-2173. [PMID: 37824228 PMCID: PMC10872816 DOI: 10.1037/dev0001630] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/14/2023]
Abstract
Why do infants learn some words earlier than others? Many theories of early word learning focus on explaining how infants map labels onto concrete objects. However, words that are more abstract than object nouns, such as uh-oh, hi, more, up, and all-gone, are typically among the first to appear in infants' vocabularies. We combined a behavioral experiment with naturalistic observational research to explore how infants learn and represent this understudied category of high-frequency, routine-based non-nouns, which we term "everyday words." In Study 1, we found that a conventional eye-tracking measure of comprehension was insufficient to capture U.S.-based English-learning 10- to 16-month-old infants' emerging understanding of everyday words. In Study 2, we analyzed the visual and social scenes surrounding caregivers' and infants' use of everyday words in a naturalistic video corpus. This ecologically motivated research revealed that everyday words rarely co-occurred with consistent visual referents, making their early learnability difficult to reconcile with dominant word learning theories. Our findings instead point to complex patterns in the types of situations associated with everyday words that could contribute to their early representation in infants' vocabularies. By leveraging both experimental and observational methods, this investigation underscores the value of using naturalistic data to broaden theories of early learning. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).
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124
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Pine JM, Freudenthal D, Gobet F. Building a unified model of the Optional Infinitive Stage: Simulating the cross-linguistic pattern of verb-marking error in typically developing children and children with Developmental Language Disorder. JOURNAL OF CHILD LANGUAGE 2023; 50:1336-1352. [PMID: 36814394 DOI: 10.1017/s0305000923000132] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/18/2023]
Abstract
Verb-marking errors are a characteristic feature of the speech of typically-developing (TD) children and are particularly prevalent in the speech of children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD). However, both the pattern of verb-marking error in TD children and the pattern of verb-marking deficit in DLD vary across languages and interact with the semantic and syntactic properties of the language being learned. In this paper, we review work using a computational model called MOSAIC. We show how this work allows us to understand several features of the cross-linguistic data that are otherwise difficult to explain. We also show how discrepancies between the developmental data and the quantitative predictions generated by MOSAIC can be used to identify weaknesses in our current understanding and lead to further theory development; and how the resulting model (MOSAIC+) helps us understand differences in the cross-linguistic patterning of verb-marking errors in TD children and children with DLD.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Daniel Freudenthal
- ESRC International, Centre for Language and Communicative Development (LuCiD)
| | - Fernand Gobet
- London School of Economics and Political Science
- ESRC International, Centre for Language and Communicative Development (LuCiD)
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125
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Chen S, Futrell R, Mahowald K. An information-theoretic approach to the typology of spatial demonstratives. Cognition 2023; 240:105505. [PMID: 37598582 DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2023.105505] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/30/2022] [Revised: 05/26/2023] [Accepted: 05/28/2023] [Indexed: 08/22/2023]
Abstract
We explore systems of spatial deictic words (such as 'here' and 'there') from the perspective of communicative efficiency using typological data from over 200 languages Nintemann et al. (2020). We argue from an information-theoretic perspective that spatial deictic systems balance informativity and complexity in the sense of the Information Bottleneck (Zaslavsky et al., (2018). We find that under an appropriate choice of cost function and need probability over meanings, among all the 21,146 theoretically possible spatial deictic systems, those adopted by real languages lie near an efficient frontier of informativity and complexity. Moreover, we find that the conditions that the need probability and the cost function need to satisfy for this result are consistent with the cognitive science literature on spatial cognition, especially regarding the source-goal asymmetry. We further show that the typological data are better explained by introducing a notion of consistency into the Information Bottleneck framework, which is jointly optimized along with informativity and complexity.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sihan Chen
- Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT, United States of America.
| | - Richard Futrell
- Department of Language Science, University of California, Irvine, United States of America
| | - Kyle Mahowald
- Department of Linguistics, The University of Texas at Austin, United States of America
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126
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Aguirre M, Brun M, Morin O, Reboul A, Mascaro O. Expectations of Processing Ease, Informativeness, and Accuracy Guide Toddlers' Processing of Novel Communicative Cues. Cogn Sci 2023; 47:e13373. [PMID: 37950700 DOI: 10.1111/cogs.13373] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/18/2022] [Revised: 08/24/2023] [Accepted: 10/20/2023] [Indexed: 11/13/2023]
Abstract
Discovering the meaning of novel communicative cues is challenging and amounts to navigating an unbounded hypothesis space. Several theories posit that this problem can be simplified by relying on positive expectations about the cognitive utility of communicated information. These theories imply that learners should assume that novel communicative cues tend to have low processing costs and high cognitive benefits. We tested this hypothesis in three studies in which toddlers (N = 90) searched for a reward hidden in one of several containers. In all studies, an adult communicated the reward's location with an unfamiliar and ambiguous cue. We manipulated the processing costs (operationalized as inferential chain length) and cognitive benefits (operationalized as informativeness) of the possible interpretations of the cues. Toddlers processing of novel communicative cues were guided by expectations of low processing costs (Study 1) and high cognitive benefits (Studies 2 and 3). More specifically, toddlers treated novel cues as if they were easy to process, informative, and accurate, even when provided with repeated evidence to the contrary. These results indicate that, from toddlerhood onward, expectations of cognitive utility shape the processing of novel communicative cues. These data also reveal that toddlers, who are in the process of learning the language and communicative conventions of people around them, exert a pressure favoring cognitive efficiency in communicative systems.
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Affiliation(s)
- Marie Aguirre
- Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences, Institute of Language and Communication Sciences, University of Neuchâtel
| | - Mélanie Brun
- Université Paris Cité, CNRS, Integrative Neuroscience and Cognition Center
| | - Olivier Morin
- Institut Jean Nicod, Département d'études cognitives, ENS, EHESS, CNRS, PSL University, UMR 8129
- Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology
| | - Anne Reboul
- Laboratory of Cognitive Psychology, UMR 7290, CNRS and Aix-Marseille University
| | - Olivier Mascaro
- Université Paris Cité, CNRS, Integrative Neuroscience and Cognition Center
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127
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Berent I. How to Tell a Dualist? Cogn Sci 2023; 47:e13380. [PMID: 37992196 DOI: 10.1111/cogs.13380] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/22/2022] [Revised: 10/24/2023] [Accepted: 11/06/2023] [Indexed: 11/24/2023]
Abstract
People exhibit conflicting intuitions concerning the mind/body links. Here, I explore a novel explanation for these inconsistencies: Dualism is a violable constraint that interacts with Essentialism. Two experiments probe these interactions. In Experiment 1, participants evaluated the emergence of psychological traits in either a replica of one's body, or in the afterlife-after the body's demise. In line with Dualism, epistemic (i.e., disembodied) traits (e.g., knowing the contrast between good/bad) were considered more likely to emerge (relative to sensorimotor/affective traits) only in the afterlife. However, so were innate traits (in line with Essentialism). To further gauge Essentialism, Experiment 2 presented the same traits to innateness judgments. Here, sensorimotor/affective (i.e., embodied) traits were considered more likely to be innate, suggesting that innateness intuitions are informed by embodiment. Moreover, innateness judgments (in Experiment 2) and embodiment intuitions (in Experiment 1) correlated. These results suggest that Dualism tacitly constrains reasoning about one's innate origins and its persistence after death. But since Dualism is "soft" and interacts with Essentialism, supernatural intuitions are chimeric, not purely ethereal.
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Affiliation(s)
- Iris Berent
- Department of Psychology, Northeastern University
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128
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Alhama RG, Rowland CF, Kidd E. How does linguistic context influence word learning? JOURNAL OF CHILD LANGUAGE 2023; 50:1374-1393. [PMID: 37337944 DOI: 10.1017/s0305000923000302] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/21/2023]
Abstract
While there are well-known demonstrations that children can use distributional information to acquire multiple components of language, the underpinnings of these achievements are unclear. In the current paper, we investigate the potential pre-requisites for a distributional learning model that can explain how children learn their first words. We review existing literature and then present the results of a series of computational simulations with Vector Space Models, a type of distributional semantic model used in Computational Linguistics, which we evaluate against vocabulary acquisition data from children. We focus on nouns and verbs, and we find that: (i) a model with flexibility to adjust for the frequency of events provides a better fit to the human data, (ii) the influence of context words is very local, especially for nouns, and (iii) words that share more contexts with other words are harder to learn.
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Affiliation(s)
- Raquel G Alhama
- Department of Cognitive Science & Artificial Intelligence, Tilburg University, The Netherlands
| | - Caroline F Rowland
- Language Development Department, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, The Netherlands
- Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University, The Netherlands
| | - Evan Kidd
- Language Development Department, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, The Netherlands
- The Australian National University, Australia
- ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language, Australia
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129
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Sanford EM, Halberda J. A Shared Intuitive (Mis)understanding of Psychophysical Law Leads Both Novices and Educated Students to Believe in a Just Noticeable Difference (JND). Open Mind (Camb) 2023; 7:785-801. [PMID: 37946851 PMCID: PMC10631794 DOI: 10.1162/opmi_a_00108] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/09/2023] [Accepted: 09/03/2023] [Indexed: 11/12/2023] Open
Abstract
Humans are both the scientists who discover psychological laws and the thinkers who behave according to those laws. Oftentimes, when our natural behavior is in accord with those laws, this dual role serves us well: our intuitions about our own behavior can serve to inform our discovery of new laws. But, in cases where the laws that we discover through science do not agree with the intuitions and biases we carry into the lab, we may find it harder to believe in and adopt those laws. Here, we explore one such case. Since the founding of psychophysics, the notion of a Just Noticeable Difference (JND) in perceptual discrimination has been ubiquitous in experimental psychology-even in spite of theoretical advances since the 1950's that argue that there can be no such thing as a threshold in perceiving difference. We find that both novices and psychologically educated students alike misunderstand the JND to mean that, below a certain threshold, humans will be unable to tell which of two quantities is greater (e.g., that humans will be completely at chance when trying to judge which is heavier, a bag with 3000 grains of sand or 3001). This belief in chance performance below a threshold is inconsistent with psychophysical law. We argue that belief in a JND is part of our intuitive theory of psychology and is therefore very difficult to dispel.
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Affiliation(s)
- Emily M. Sanford
- Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA
| | - Justin Halberda
- Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA
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130
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Poletti C, Díaz-Barriga Yáñez A, Prado J, Thevenot C. The development of simple addition problem solving in children: Reliance on automatized counting or memory retrieval depends on both expertise and problem size. J Exp Child Psychol 2023; 234:105710. [PMID: 37285761 DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2023.105710] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/29/2023] [Revised: 04/05/2023] [Accepted: 05/11/2023] [Indexed: 06/09/2023]
Abstract
In an experiment, 98 children aged 8 to 9, 10 to 12, and 13 to 15 years solved addition problems with a sum up to 10. In another experiment, the same children solved the same calculations within a sign priming paradigm where half the additions were displayed with the "+" sign 150 ms before the addends. Therefore, size effects and priming effects could be considered conjointly within the same populations. Our analyses revealed that small problems, constructed with addends from 1 to 4, presented a linear increase of solution times as a function of problem sums (i.e., size effect) in all age groups. However, an operator priming effect (i.e., facilitation of the solving process with the anticipated presentation of the "+" sign) was observed only in the group of oldest children. These results support the idea that children use a counting procedure that becomes automatized (as revealed by the priming effect) around 13 years of age. For larger problems and whatever the age group, no size or priming effects were observed, suggesting that the answers to these problems were already retrieved from memory at 8 to 9 years of age. For this specific category of large problems, negative slopes in solution times demonstrate that retrieval starts from the largest problems during development. These results are discussed in light of a horse race model in which procedures can win over retrieval.
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Affiliation(s)
- Céline Poletti
- Institut de Psychologie, Université de Lausanne, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland
| | - Andrea Díaz-Barriga Yáñez
- Lyon Neuroscience Research Center (CRNL), INSERM U1028-CNRS UMR5292, University of Lyon, 69675 Bron Cedex, France
| | - Jérôme Prado
- Lyon Neuroscience Research Center (CRNL), INSERM U1028-CNRS UMR5292, University of Lyon, 69675 Bron Cedex, France.
| | - Catherine Thevenot
- Institut de Psychologie, Université de Lausanne, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland.
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131
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Alghazo S, Jarrah M. No Adjective Ordering Preferences in Jordanian Arabic Grammar. JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLINGUISTIC RESEARCH 2023; 52:1633-1667. [PMID: 37162637 DOI: 10.1007/s10936-023-09965-0] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 04/15/2023] [Indexed: 05/11/2023]
Abstract
This article offers evidence, which is based on acceptability judgement tasks, in favour of the absence of unmarked linear serializations of stacked, non-coordinated adjectives in Jordanian Arabic (JA). Results from 16 experiments of acceptability judgements from 197 native speakers of JA point to the fact that JA places no adjective ordering. However, two factors are found to be significant. The first factor pertains to the number of stacked, non-coordinated adjectives. All possible word order patterns of different stacked adjectives are (fully) acceptable with two stacked adjectives. However, constructions with three or more stacked adjectives are significantly degraded. This is universally held, regardless of the type of the stacked adjectives (size, color, shape, etc.). We ascribe this to the third-factor effects (Chomsky in Linguist Inq 36(1):1-22, 2005) (particularly with reference to working memory and processing load) in restricting the possible number of adjectives in a given construction. A second factor relates to the syntactic position of the adjectives (attributive vs. predicative). The results reveal that attributive adjectives are significantly more acceptable than predicative adjectives (which can also be freely stacked in JA). This is also attributed to the effects of these factors favoring minimal computations. We follow O'Grady (Front Psychol 12:660296, 2021) in that the processing of across-clausal phenomena (as is the case with predicative adjectives) is more demanding than intra-clausal ones (as is the case with attributive adjectives).
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Affiliation(s)
- Sharif Alghazo
- The University of Jordan, Amman, Jordan.
- University of Sharjah, Sharjah, UAE.
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132
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Szymanik J, Kochari A, Bremnes HS. Questions About Quantifiers: Symbolic and Nonsymbolic Quantity Processing by the Brain. Cogn Sci 2023; 47:e13346. [PMID: 37867321 DOI: 10.1111/cogs.13346] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/08/2020] [Revised: 05/11/2023] [Accepted: 09/06/2023] [Indexed: 10/24/2023]
Abstract
One approach to understanding how the human cognitive system stores and operates with quantifiers such as "some," "many," and "all" is to investigate their interaction with the cognitive mechanisms for estimating and comparing quantities from perceptual input (i.e., nonsymbolic quantities). While a potential link between quantifier processing and nonsymbolic quantity processing has been considered in the past, it has never been discussed extensively. Simultaneously, there is a long line of research within the field of numerical cognition on the relationship between processing exact number symbols (such as "3" or "three") and nonsymbolic quantity. This accumulated knowledge can potentially be harvested for research on quantifiers since quantifiers and number symbols are two different ways of referring to quantity information symbolically. The goal of the present review is to survey the research on the relationship between quantifiers and nonsymbolic quantity processing mechanisms and provide a set of research directions and specific questions for the investigation of quantifier processing.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jakub Szymanik
- Center for Brain/Mind Sciences and the Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science, University of Trento
| | - Arnold Kochari
- Institute for Logic, Language, and Computation, University of Amsterdam
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133
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Perfors A, Piantadosi ST, Kidd C. Trans-inclusive gender categories are cognitively natural. Nat Hum Behav 2023; 7:1609-1611. [PMID: 37864079 DOI: 10.1038/s41562-023-01657-y] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/22/2023]
Affiliation(s)
- Andrew Perfors
- School of Psychological Sciences, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria, Australia.
| | - Steven T Piantadosi
- Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA
- Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA
| | - Celeste Kidd
- Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA
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134
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Chakravarthi R, Nordqvist A, Poncet M, Adamian N. Fundamental units of numerosity estimation. Cognition 2023; 239:105565. [PMID: 37487302 DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2023.105565] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/23/2022] [Revised: 05/22/2023] [Accepted: 07/13/2023] [Indexed: 07/26/2023]
Abstract
Humans can approximately enumerate a large number of objects at a single glance. While several mechanisms have been proposed to account for this ability, the fundamental units over which they operate remain unclear. Previous studies have argued that estimation mechanisms act only on topologically distinct units or on units formed by spatial grouping cues such as proximity and connectivity, but not on units grouped by similarity. Over four experiments, we tested this claim by systematically assessing and demonstrating that similarity grouping leads to underestimation, just as spatial grouping does. Ungrouped objects with the same low-level properties as grouped objects did not cause underestimation. Further, the underestimation caused by spatial and similarity grouping was additive, suggesting that these grouping processes operate independently. These findings argue against the proposal that estimation mechanisms operate solely on topological units. Instead, we conclude that estimation processes act on representations constructed after Gestalt grouping principles, whether similarity based or spatial, have organised incoming visual input.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Andy Nordqvist
- School of Psychology, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, United Kingdom.
| | - Marlene Poncet
- School of Psychology & Neuroscience, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, United Kingdom.
| | - Nika Adamian
- School of Psychology, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, United Kingdom.
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135
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Toader C, Tataru CP, Florian IA, Covache-Busuioc RA, Bratu BG, Glavan LA, Bordeianu A, Dumitrascu DI, Ciurea AV. Cognitive Crescendo: How Music Shapes the Brain's Structure and Function. Brain Sci 2023; 13:1390. [PMID: 37891759 PMCID: PMC10605363 DOI: 10.3390/brainsci13101390] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/25/2023] [Revised: 09/25/2023] [Accepted: 09/27/2023] [Indexed: 10/29/2023] Open
Abstract
Music is a complex phenomenon with multiple brain areas and neural connections being implicated. Centuries ago, music was discovered as an efficient modality for psychological status enrichment and even for the treatment of multiple pathologies. Modern research investigations give a new avenue for music perception and the understanding of the underlying neurological mechanisms, using neuroimaging, especially magnetic resonance imaging. Multiple brain areas were depicted in the last decades as being of high value for music processing, and further analyses in the neuropsychology field uncover the implications in emotional and cognitive activities. Music listening improves cognitive functions such as memory, attention span, and behavioral augmentation. In rehabilitation, music-based therapies have a high rate of success for the treatment of depression and anxiety and even in neurological disorders such as regaining the body integrity after a stroke episode. Our review focused on the neurological and psychological implications of music, as well as presenting the significant clinical relevance of therapies using music.
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Affiliation(s)
- Corneliu Toader
- Department of Neurosurgery, “Carol Davila” University of Medicine and Pharmacy, 020021 Bucharest, Romania; (C.T.); (B.-G.B.); (L.A.G.); (A.B.); (D.-I.D.); (A.V.C.)
- Department of Vascular Neurosurgery, National Institute of Neurology and Neurovascular Diseases, 077160 Bucharest, Romania
| | - Calin Petru Tataru
- Department of Opthamology, “Carol Davila” University of Medicine and Pharmacy, 020021 Bucharest, Romania
- Central Military Emergency Hospital “Dr. Carol Davila”, 010825 Bucharest, Romania
| | - Ioan-Alexandru Florian
- Department of Neurosciences, “Iuliu Hatieganu” University of Medicine and Pharmacy, 400012 Cluj-Napoca, Romania
| | - Razvan-Adrian Covache-Busuioc
- Department of Neurosurgery, “Carol Davila” University of Medicine and Pharmacy, 020021 Bucharest, Romania; (C.T.); (B.-G.B.); (L.A.G.); (A.B.); (D.-I.D.); (A.V.C.)
| | - Bogdan-Gabriel Bratu
- Department of Neurosurgery, “Carol Davila” University of Medicine and Pharmacy, 020021 Bucharest, Romania; (C.T.); (B.-G.B.); (L.A.G.); (A.B.); (D.-I.D.); (A.V.C.)
| | - Luca Andrei Glavan
- Department of Neurosurgery, “Carol Davila” University of Medicine and Pharmacy, 020021 Bucharest, Romania; (C.T.); (B.-G.B.); (L.A.G.); (A.B.); (D.-I.D.); (A.V.C.)
| | - Andrei Bordeianu
- Department of Neurosurgery, “Carol Davila” University of Medicine and Pharmacy, 020021 Bucharest, Romania; (C.T.); (B.-G.B.); (L.A.G.); (A.B.); (D.-I.D.); (A.V.C.)
| | - David-Ioan Dumitrascu
- Department of Neurosurgery, “Carol Davila” University of Medicine and Pharmacy, 020021 Bucharest, Romania; (C.T.); (B.-G.B.); (L.A.G.); (A.B.); (D.-I.D.); (A.V.C.)
| | - Alexandru Vlad Ciurea
- Department of Neurosurgery, “Carol Davila” University of Medicine and Pharmacy, 020021 Bucharest, Romania; (C.T.); (B.-G.B.); (L.A.G.); (A.B.); (D.-I.D.); (A.V.C.)
- Neurosurgery Department, Sanador Clinical Hospital, 010991 Bucharest, Romania
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136
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Canudas-Grabolosa I, Martín-Salguero A, Bonatti LL. Natural logic and baby LoTH. Behav Brain Sci 2023; 46:e266. [PMID: 37766633 DOI: 10.1017/s0140525x23001942] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 09/29/2023]
Abstract
Language-of-thought hypothesis (LoTH) is having a profound impact on cognition studies. However, much remains unknown about its basic primitives and generative operations. Infant studies are fundamental, but methodologically very challenging. By distilling potential primitives from work in natural-language semantics, an approach beyond the corset of standard formal logic may be undertaken. Still, the road ahead is challenging and long.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Ana Martín-Salguero
- Center for Brain and Cognition, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain
- Cognitive Neuroimaging Unit, CEA, INSERM, Université Paris-Saclay, NeuroSpin Center, Gif/Yvette, France
| | - Luca L Bonatti
- Center for Brain and Cognition, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain
- ICREA, Barcelona, Spain
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137
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Hochmann JR. Incomplete language-of-thought in infancy. Behav Brain Sci 2023; 46:e278. [PMID: 37766647 DOI: 10.1017/s0140525x23001826] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 09/29/2023]
Abstract
The view that infants possess a full-fledged propositional language-of-thought (LoT) is appealing, providing a unifying account for infants' precocious reasoning skills in many domains. However, careful appraisal of empirical evidence suggests that there is still no convincing evidence that infants possess discrete representations of abstract relations, suggesting that infants' LoT remains incomplete. Parallel arguments hold for perception.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jean-Rémy Hochmann
- CNRS UMR5229 - Institut des Sciences Cognitives Marc Jeannerod, Bron, France. ://sites.google.com/site/jrhochmann/
- Université Lyon 1 Claude Bernard, Lyon, France
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138
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Tunçgenç B, Bamford JS, Fawcett C, Cohen E. The Synchrony-Prosociality Link Cannot Be Explained Away as Expectancy Effect: Response to Atwood et al. (). Open Mind (Camb) 2023; 7:711-714. [PMID: 37840755 PMCID: PMC10575548 DOI: 10.1162/opmi_a_00103] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/20/2023] [Accepted: 08/05/2023] [Indexed: 10/17/2023] Open
Abstract
Moving in time to others, as is often observed in dance, music, sports and much of children's play cross-culturally, is thought to make people feel and act more prosocially towards each other. In a recent paper, Atwood et al. (2022) argued that the inferential validity of this link found between synchronous behaviour and prosociality might be mainly due to "expectancy effects generated by a combination of (1) experimenter expectancy, leading to experimenter bias; and (2) participant expectancy (i.e., placebo effects)". Here, we counter these arguments with (1) examples of studies devoid of experimenter expectancy effects that nevertheless demonstrate a positive link between synchrony and prosociality, and (2) insights from the developmental literature that address participant expectancy by showing how expectations formed through lived experiences of synchronous interactions do not necessarily threaten inferential validity. In conclusion, there is already sufficient good-quality evidence showing the positive effects of synchronous behaviours on prosociality beyond what can be explained by experimenter or participant expectation effects.
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Affiliation(s)
- Bahar Tunçgenç
- Psychology Department, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK
- Social Body Lab, Institute of Human Sciences, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
| | - Joshua S. Bamford
- Social Body Lab, Institute of Human Sciences, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
- Centre of Excellence in Music, Mind, Body and Brain, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland
| | | | - Emma Cohen
- Social Body Lab, Institute of Human Sciences, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
- Wadham College, Oxford, UK
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139
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Geangu E, Smith WAP, Mason HT, Martinez-Cedillo AP, Hunter D, Knight MI, Liang H, del Carmen Garcia de Soria Bazan M, Tse ZTH, Rowland T, Corpuz D, Hunter J, Singh N, Vuong QC, Abdelgayed MRS, Mullineaux DR, Smith S, Muller BR. EgoActive: Integrated Wireless Wearable Sensors for Capturing Infant Egocentric Auditory-Visual Statistics and Autonomic Nervous System Function 'in the Wild'. SENSORS (BASEL, SWITZERLAND) 2023; 23:7930. [PMID: 37765987 PMCID: PMC10534696 DOI: 10.3390/s23187930] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/28/2023] [Revised: 08/25/2023] [Accepted: 09/11/2023] [Indexed: 09/29/2023]
Abstract
There have been sustained efforts toward using naturalistic methods in developmental science to measure infant behaviors in the real world from an egocentric perspective because statistical regularities in the environment can shape and be shaped by the developing infant. However, there is no user-friendly and unobtrusive technology to densely and reliably sample life in the wild. To address this gap, we present the design, implementation and validation of the EgoActive platform, which addresses limitations of existing wearable technologies for developmental research. EgoActive records the active infants' egocentric perspective of the world via a miniature wireless head-mounted camera concurrently with their physiological responses to this input via a lightweight, wireless ECG/acceleration sensor. We also provide software tools to facilitate data analyses. Our validation studies showed that the cameras and body sensors performed well. Families also reported that the platform was comfortable, easy to use and operate, and did not interfere with daily activities. The synchronized multimodal data from the EgoActive platform can help tease apart complex processes that are important for child development to further our understanding of areas ranging from executive function to emotion processing and social learning.
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Affiliation(s)
- Elena Geangu
- Psychology Department, University of York, York YO10 5DD, UK; (A.P.M.-C.); (M.d.C.G.d.S.B.)
| | - William A. P. Smith
- Department of Computer Science, University of York, York YO10 5DD, UK; (W.A.P.S.); (J.H.); (M.R.S.A.); (B.R.M.)
| | - Harry T. Mason
- School of Physics, Engineering and Technology, University of York, York YO10 5DD, UK; (H.T.M.); (D.H.); (N.S.); (S.S.)
| | | | - David Hunter
- School of Physics, Engineering and Technology, University of York, York YO10 5DD, UK; (H.T.M.); (D.H.); (N.S.); (S.S.)
| | - Marina I. Knight
- Department of Mathematics, University of York, York YO10 5DD, UK; (M.I.K.); (D.R.M.)
| | - Haipeng Liang
- School of Engineering and Materials Science, Queen Mary University of London, London E1 2AT, UK; (H.L.); (Z.T.H.T.)
| | | | - Zion Tsz Ho Tse
- School of Engineering and Materials Science, Queen Mary University of London, London E1 2AT, UK; (H.L.); (Z.T.H.T.)
| | - Thomas Rowland
- Protolabs, Halesfield 8, Telford TF7 4QN, UK; (T.R.); (D.C.)
| | - Dom Corpuz
- Protolabs, Halesfield 8, Telford TF7 4QN, UK; (T.R.); (D.C.)
| | - Josh Hunter
- Department of Computer Science, University of York, York YO10 5DD, UK; (W.A.P.S.); (J.H.); (M.R.S.A.); (B.R.M.)
| | - Nishant Singh
- School of Physics, Engineering and Technology, University of York, York YO10 5DD, UK; (H.T.M.); (D.H.); (N.S.); (S.S.)
| | - Quoc C. Vuong
- Biosciences Institute, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU, UK;
| | - Mona Ragab Sayed Abdelgayed
- Department of Computer Science, University of York, York YO10 5DD, UK; (W.A.P.S.); (J.H.); (M.R.S.A.); (B.R.M.)
| | - David R. Mullineaux
- Department of Mathematics, University of York, York YO10 5DD, UK; (M.I.K.); (D.R.M.)
| | - Stephen Smith
- School of Physics, Engineering and Technology, University of York, York YO10 5DD, UK; (H.T.M.); (D.H.); (N.S.); (S.S.)
| | - Bruce R. Muller
- Department of Computer Science, University of York, York YO10 5DD, UK; (W.A.P.S.); (J.H.); (M.R.S.A.); (B.R.M.)
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140
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Dolscheid S, Çelik S, Erkan H, Küntay A, Majid A. Children's associations between space and pitch are differentially shaped by language. Dev Sci 2023; 26:e13341. [PMID: 36315982 DOI: 10.1111/desc.13341] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/15/2022] [Revised: 09/08/2022] [Accepted: 10/18/2022] [Indexed: 11/30/2022]
Abstract
Musical properties, such as auditory pitch, are not expressed in the same way across cultures. In some languages, pitch is expressed in terms of spatial height (high vs. low), whereas others rely on thickness vocabulary (thick = low frequency vs. thin = high frequency). We investigated how children represent pitch in the face of this variable linguistic input by examining the developmental trajectory of linguistic and non-linguistic space-pitch associations in children who acquire Dutch (a height-pitch language) or Turkish (a thickness-pitch language). Five-year-olds, 7-year-olds, 9-year-olds, and 11-year-olds were tested for their understanding of pitch terminology and their associations of spatial dimensions with auditory pitch when no language was used. Across tasks, thickness-pitch associations were more robust than height-pitch associations. This was true for Turkish children, and also Dutch children not exposed to thickness-pitch vocabulary. Height-pitch associations, on the other hand, were not reliable-not even in Dutch-speaking children until age 11-the age when they demonstrated full comprehension of height-pitch terminology. Moreover, Turkish-speaking children reversed height-pitch associations. Taken together, these findings suggest thickness-pitch associations are acquired in similar ways by children from different cultures, but the acquisition of height-pitch associations is more susceptible to linguistic input. Overall, then, despite cross-cultural stability in some components, there is variation in how children come to represent musical pitch, one of the building blocks of music. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: Children from diverse cultures differ in their understanding of music vocabulary and in their nonlinguistic associations between spatial dimensions and auditory pitch. Height-pitch mappings are acquired late and require additional scaffolding from language, whereas thickness-pitch mappings are acquired early and are less susceptible to language input. Space-pitch mappings are not static from birth to adulthood, but change over development, suggesting music cognition is shaped by cross-cultural experience.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sarah Dolscheid
- University of Cologne, Department of Rehabilitation and Special Education, Cologne, Germany
| | | | - Hasan Erkan
- Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
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141
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Cameron DJ, Caldarone N, Psaris M, Carrillo C, Trainor LJ. The complexity-aesthetics relationship for musical rhythm is more fixed than flexible: Evidence from children and expert dancers. Dev Sci 2023; 26:e13360. [PMID: 36527729 DOI: 10.1111/desc.13360] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/08/2022] [Revised: 11/01/2022] [Accepted: 12/09/2022] [Indexed: 12/23/2022]
Abstract
The urge to move to music (groove) depends in part on rhythmic syncopation in the music. For adults, the syncopation-groove relationship has an inverted-U shape: listeners want to move most to rhythms that have some, but not too much, syncopation. However, we do not know whether the syncopation-groove relationship is relatively sensitive to, or resistant to, a listener's experience. In two sets of experiments, we tested whether the syncopation-groove relationship is affected by dance experience or changes through development in childhood. Dancers and nondancers rated groove for 50 rhythmic patterns varying in syncopation. Dancers' and nondancers' ratings did not differ (and Bayesian tests provided substantial evidence that they were equivalent) in terms of mean groove and the optimal level of syncopation. Similarly, ballet and hip-hop dancers' syncopation-groove relationships did not differ. However, dancers had more robust syncopation-groove relationships (higher goodness-of-fit) than nondancers. Children (3-6 years old) completed two tasks to assess their syncopation-groove relationships: In a 2-alternative-forced choice task, children compared rhythms from 2 of 3 possible levels of syncopation (low, medium, and high) and chose which rhythm in a pair was better for dancing. In a dance task, children danced to the same rhythms. Results from both tasks indicated that for children, as for adults, medium syncopation rhythms elicit more groove than low syncopation rhythms. A follow-up experiment replicated the 2-alternative-forced choice task results. Taken together, the results suggest the optimal level of syncopation for groove is resistant to experience, although experience may affect the robustness of the inverted-U relationship. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: In Experiment 1, dancers and nondancers rated groove (the urge to move) for musical rhythms, demonstrating the same inverted-U relationships between syncopation and groove. In Experiment 2, children and adults both chose rhythms with moderate syncopation more than low syncopation as more groove-inducing or better for dancing. Children also danced more for moderate than low syncopation, showing a close perception-behavior relationship across tasks. Similarities in the syncopation-groove relationship regardless of dance training and age suggest that this perceptual and behavioral groove response to rhythmic complexity may be quite resistant to experience.
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Affiliation(s)
- Daniel J Cameron
- Department of Psychology, Neuroscience and Behaviour, McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada
| | - Nicole Caldarone
- Department of Psychology, Neuroscience and Behaviour, McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada
| | - Maya Psaris
- Department of Psychology, Neuroscience and Behaviour, McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada
| | - Chantal Carrillo
- Department of Psychology, Neuroscience and Behaviour, McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada
| | - Laurel J Trainor
- Department of Psychology, Neuroscience and Behaviour, McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada
- McMaster Institute for Music and the Mind, McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada
- Rotman Research Institute, Baycrest Hospital, Toronto, Canada
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142
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Sauppe S, Naess Å, Roversi G, Meyer M, Bornkessel-Schlesewsky I, Bickel B. An Agent-First Preference in a Patient-First Language During Sentence Comprehension. Cogn Sci 2023; 47:e13340. [PMID: 37715510 DOI: 10.1111/cogs.13340] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/08/2022] [Revised: 07/05/2023] [Accepted: 08/30/2023] [Indexed: 09/17/2023]
Abstract
The language comprehension system preferentially assumes that agents come first during incremental processing. While this might reflect a biologically fixed bias, shared with other domains and other species, the evidence is limited to languages that place agents first, and so the bias could also be learned from usage frequency. Here, we probe the bias with electroencephalography (EEG) in Äiwoo, a language that by default places patients first, but where sentence-initial nouns are still locally ambiguous between patient or agent roles. Comprehenders transiently interpreted nonhuman nouns as patients, eliciting a negativity when disambiguation was toward the less common agent-initial order. By contrast and against frequencies, human nouns were transiently interpreted as agents, eliciting an N400-like negativity when the disambiguation was toward patient-initial order. Consistent with the notion of a fixed property, the agent bias is robust against usage frequency for human referents. However, this bias can be reversed by frequency experience for nonhuman referents.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sebastian Sauppe
- Department of Comparative Language Science, University of Zurich
- Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Language Evolution, University of Zurich
| | - Åshild Naess
- Department of Linguistics and Scandinavian Studies, University of Oslo
| | - Giovanni Roversi
- Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
| | - Martin Meyer
- Department of Comparative Language Science, University of Zurich
- Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Language Evolution, University of Zurich
- Cognitive Psychology Unit, Psychological Institute, University of Klagenfurt
| | - Ina Bornkessel-Schlesewsky
- Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory, Australian Research Centre for Interactive and Virtual Environments, University of South Australia
| | - Balthasar Bickel
- Department of Comparative Language Science, University of Zurich
- Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Language Evolution, University of Zurich
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143
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Portelance E, Duan Y, Frank MC, Lupyan G. Predicting Age of Acquisition for Children's Early Vocabulary in Five Languages Using Language Model Surprisal. Cogn Sci 2023; 47:e13334. [PMID: 37695825 DOI: 10.1111/cogs.13334] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/03/2023] [Revised: 07/26/2023] [Accepted: 08/14/2023] [Indexed: 09/13/2023]
Abstract
What makes a word easy to learn? Early-learned words are frequent and tend to name concrete referents. But words typically do not occur in isolation. Some words are predictable from their contexts; others are less so. Here, we investigate whether predictability relates to when children start producing different words (age of acquisition; AoA). We operationalized predictability in terms of a word's surprisal in child-directed speech, computed using n-gram and long-short-term-memory (LSTM) language models. Predictability derived from LSTMs was generally a better predictor than predictability derived from n-gram models. Across five languages, average surprisal was positively correlated with the AoA of predicates and function words but not nouns. Controlling for concreteness and word frequency, more predictable predicates and function words were learned earlier. Differences in predictability between languages were associated with cross-linguistic differences in AoA: the same word (when it was a predicate) was produced earlier in languages where the word was more predictable.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Yuguang Duan
- Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Madison
| | | | - Gary Lupyan
- Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Madison
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144
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Koshevoy A, Miton H, Morin O. Zipf's Law of Abbreviation holds for individual characters across a broad range of writing systems. Cognition 2023; 238:105527. [PMID: 37364507 DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2023.105527] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/12/2022] [Revised: 06/12/2023] [Accepted: 06/14/2023] [Indexed: 06/28/2023]
Abstract
Zipf's Law of Abbreviation - the idea that more frequent symbols in a code are simpler than less frequent ones - has been shown to hold at the level of words in many languages. We tested whether it holds at the level of individual written characters. Character complexity is similar to word length in that it requires more cognitive and motor effort for producing and processing more complex symbols. We built a dataset of character complexity and frequency measures covering 27 different writing systems. According to our data, Zipf's Law of Abbreviation holds for every writing system in our dataset - the more frequent characters have lower degrees of complexity and vice-versa. This result provides further evidence of optimization mechanisms shaping communication systems.
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Affiliation(s)
- Alexey Koshevoy
- Laboratoire de Psychologie Cognitive, Aix-Marseille Université, CNRS, 13003 Marseille, France; Institut Jean Nicod, Département d'études cognitives, ENS, EHESS, CNRS, PSL University, UMR 8129, 75005 Paris, France; Minds and Traditions Group, Max Planck Institute for Geoanthropology, 07745 Jena, Germany.
| | | | - Olivier Morin
- Institut Jean Nicod, Département d'études cognitives, ENS, EHESS, CNRS, PSL University, UMR 8129, 75005 Paris, France; Minds and Traditions Group, Max Planck Institute for Geoanthropology, 07745 Jena, Germany
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145
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Sander-Montant A, López Pérez M, Byers-Heinlein K. The more they hear the more they learn? Using data from bilinguals to test models of early lexical development. Cognition 2023; 238:105525. [PMID: 37402336 DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2023.105525] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/13/2022] [Revised: 05/19/2023] [Accepted: 06/10/2023] [Indexed: 07/06/2023]
Abstract
Children have an early ability to learn and comprehend words, a skill that develops as they age. A critical question remains regarding what drives this development. Maturation-based theories emphasise cognitive maturity as a driver of comprehension, while accumulator theories emphasise children's accumulation of language experience over time. In this study we used archival looking-while-listening data from 155 children aged 14-48 months with a range of exposure to the target languages (from 10% to 100%) to evaluate the relative contributions of maturation and experience. We compared four statistical models of noun learning: maturation-only, experience-only, additive (maturation plus experience), and accumulator (maturation times experience). The best-fitting model was the additive model in which both maturation (age) and experience were independent contributors to noun comprehension: older children as well as children who had more experience with the target language were more accurate and looked faster to the target in the looking-while-listening task. A 25% change in relative language exposure was equivalent to a 4 month change in age, and age effects were stronger at younger than at older ages. Whereas accumulator models predict that the lexical development of children with less exposure to a language (as is typical in bilinguals) should fall further and further behind children with more exposure to a language (such as monolinguals), our results indicate that bilinguals are buffered against effects of reduced exposure in each language. This study shows that continuous-level measures from individual children's looking-while-listening data, gathered from children with a range of language experience, provide a powerful window into lexical development.
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Affiliation(s)
- Andrea Sander-Montant
- Concordia Infant Research Lab, Department of Psychology, Concordia University (Canada), 7141 Sherbrooke St. West, PY-033, Montréal, Québec H4B 1R6, Canada.
| | - Melanie López Pérez
- Concordia Infant Research Lab, Department of Psychology, Concordia University (Canada), 7141 Sherbrooke St. West, PY-033, Montréal, Québec H4B 1R6, Canada.
| | - Krista Byers-Heinlein
- Concordia Infant Research Lab, Department of Psychology, Concordia University (Canada), 7141 Sherbrooke St. West, PY-033, Montréal, Québec H4B 1R6, Canada.
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146
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Cipora K, Gashaj V, Gridley AS, Soltanlou M, Nuerk HC. Cultural similarities and specificities of finger counting and montring: Evidence from Amazon Tsimane' people. Acta Psychol (Amst) 2023; 239:104009. [PMID: 37586227 DOI: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2023.104009] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/30/2021] [Revised: 07/20/2023] [Accepted: 08/08/2023] [Indexed: 08/18/2023] Open
Abstract
Numerical cognition might be embodied, that is, grounded in bodily actions. This claim is supported by the observation that, potentially due to our shared biology, finger counting is prevalent among a variety of cultures. Differences in finger counting are apparent even within Western cultures. Relatively few indigenous cultures have been systematically analyzed in terms of traditional finger counting and montring (i.e., communicating numbers with fingers) routines. Even fewer studies used the same protocols across cultures, allowing for a systematic comparison of indigenous and Western finger counting routines. We analyze the finger counting and montring routines of Tsimane' (N = 121), an indigenous people living in the Bolivian Amazon rainforest, depending on handedness, education level, and exposure to mainstream, industrialized Bolivian culture. Tsimane' routines are compared with those of German and British participants. Tsimane' reveal a greater variation in finger counting and montring routines, which seems to be modified by their education level. We outline a framework on how different factors such as handedness and reading direction might affect cross-cultural and within-cultural variation in finger counting.
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Affiliation(s)
- Krzysztof Cipora
- Centre for Mathematical Cognition, Loughborough University, UK; Department of Psychology, University of Tuebingen, Tuebingen, Germany; LEAD Graduate School & Research Network, University of Tuebingen, Tuebingen, Germany.
| | - Venera Gashaj
- Centre for Mathematical Cognition, Loughborough University, UK; Department of Psychology, University of Tuebingen, Tuebingen, Germany
| | | | - Mojtaba Soltanlou
- Department of Psychology, University of Tuebingen, Tuebingen, Germany; School of Psychology, University of Surrey, Guildford, UK; Department of Childhood Education, Faculty of Education, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa
| | - Hans-Christoph Nuerk
- Department of Psychology, University of Tuebingen, Tuebingen, Germany; LEAD Graduate School & Research Network, University of Tuebingen, Tuebingen, Germany
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147
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Werchan DM, Thomason ME, Brito NH. OWLET: An automated, open-source method for infant gaze tracking using smartphone and webcam recordings. Behav Res Methods 2023; 55:3149-3163. [PMID: 36070130 PMCID: PMC9450825 DOI: 10.3758/s13428-022-01962-w] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 08/20/2022] [Indexed: 01/16/2023]
Abstract
Groundbreaking insights into the origins of the human mind have been garnered through the study of eye movements in preverbal subjects who are unable to explain their thought processes. Developmental research has largely relied on in-lab testing with trained experimenters. This constraint provides a narrow window into infant cognition and impedes large-scale data collection in families from diverse socioeconomic, geographic, and cultural backgrounds. Here we introduce a new open-source methodology for automatically analyzing infant eye-tracking data collected on personal devices in the home. Using algorithms from computer vision, machine learning, and ecological psychology, we develop an online webcam-linked eye tracker (OWLET) that provides robust estimation of infants' point of gaze from smartphone and webcam recordings of infant assessments in the home. We validate OWLET in a large sample of 7-month-old infants (N = 127) tested remotely, using an established visual attention task. We show that this new method reliably estimates infants' point-of-gaze across a variety of contexts, including testing on both computers and mobile devices, and exhibits excellent external validity with parental-report measures of attention. Our platform fills a significant gap in current tools available for rapid online data collection and large-scale assessments of cognitive processes in infants. Remote assessment addresses the need for greater diversity and accessibility in human studies and may support the ecological validity of behavioral experiments. This constitutes a critical and timely advance in a core domain of developmental research and in psychological science more broadly.
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Affiliation(s)
- Denise M Werchan
- Department of Population Health, New York University School of Medicine, 227 E 30th St, 7th Fl, New York, NY, 10016, USA.
- Department of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, New York University School of Medicine, New York, NY, 10016, USA.
| | - Moriah E Thomason
- Department of Population Health, New York University School of Medicine, 227 E 30th St, 7th Fl, New York, NY, 10016, USA
- Department of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, New York University School of Medicine, New York, NY, 10016, USA
| | - Natalie H Brito
- Department of Applied Psychology, New York University, New York, NY, 10003, USA
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148
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Gomes V, Doherty R, Smits D, Goldin-Meadow S, Trueswell JC, Feiman R. It's not just what we don't know: The mapping problem in the acquisition of negation. Cogn Psychol 2023; 145:101592. [PMID: 37567048 DOI: 10.1016/j.cogpsych.2023.101592] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/13/2023] [Revised: 07/03/2023] [Accepted: 07/23/2023] [Indexed: 08/13/2023]
Abstract
How do learners learn what no and not mean when they are only presented with what is? Given its complexity, abstractness, and roles in logic, truth-functional negation might be a conceptual accomplishment. As a result, young children's gradual acquisition of negation words might be due to their undergoing a gradual conceptual change that is necessary to represent those words' logical meaning. However, it's also possible that linguistic expressions of negation take time to learn because of children's gradually increasing grasp of their language. To understand what no and not mean, children might first need to understand the rest of the sentences in which those words are used. We provide experimental evidence that conceptually equipped learners (adults) face the same acquisition challenges that children do when their access to linguistic information is restricted, which simulates how much language children understand at different points in acquisition. When watching a silenced video of naturalistic uses of negators by parents speaking to their children, adults could tell when the parent was prohibiting the child and struggled with inferring that negators were used to express logical negation. However, when provided with additional information about what else the parent said, guessing that the parent had expressed logical negation became easy for adults. Though our findings do not rule out that young learners also undergo conceptual change, they show that increasing understanding of language alone, with no accompanying conceptual change, can account for the gradual acquisition of negation words.
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Affiliation(s)
- Victor Gomes
- Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA.
| | - Rebecca Doherty
- Department of Cognitive, Linguistic & Psychological Sciences, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA; Department of Psychology, University of Bath, UK
| | - Daniel Smits
- Department of Cognitive, Linguistic & Psychological Sciences, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA
| | | | - John C Trueswell
- Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA
| | - Roman Feiman
- Department of Cognitive, Linguistic & Psychological Sciences, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA
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149
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Brändle F, Stocks LJ, Tenenbaum JB, Gershman SJ, Schulz E. Empowerment contributes to exploration behaviour in a creative video game. Nat Hum Behav 2023; 7:1481-1489. [PMID: 37488401 DOI: 10.1038/s41562-023-01661-2] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/17/2022] [Accepted: 06/15/2023] [Indexed: 07/26/2023]
Abstract
Studies of human exploration frequently cast people as serendipitously stumbling upon good options. Yet these studies may not capture the richness of exploration strategies that people exhibit in more complex environments. Here we study behaviour in a large dataset of 29,493 players of the richly structured online game 'Little Alchemy 2'. In this game, players start with four elements, which they can combine to create up to 720 complex objects. We find that players are driven not only by external reward signals, such as an attempt to produce successful outcomes, but also by an intrinsic motivation to create objects that empower them to create even more objects. We find that this drive for empowerment is eliminated when playing a game variant that lacks recognizable semantics, indicating that people use their knowledge about the world and its possibilities to guide their exploration. Our results suggest that the drive for empowerment may be a potent source of intrinsic motivation in richly structured domains, particularly those that lack explicit reward signals.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Lena J Stocks
- Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany
| | - Joshua B Tenenbaum
- Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA
- Center for Brains, Minds, and Machines, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA
| | - Samuel J Gershman
- Center for Brains, Minds, and Machines, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA
- Department of Psychology and Center for Brain Science, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA
| | - Eric Schulz
- Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany
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150
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Radovanovic M, Chao TWT, Onyshko E, Huynh QDT, Liu YL, Sommerville JA. Not just if, but how much: Children and adults use cost and need to make evaluations about generosity across contexts. Cognition 2023; 238:105533. [PMID: 37390606 DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2023.105533] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/04/2022] [Revised: 06/20/2023] [Accepted: 06/22/2023] [Indexed: 07/02/2023]
Abstract
Evaluations of others' generosity are critical for selecting quality social partners, yet the factors which systematically affect these evaluations and whether they vary across development are still relatively unclear. Here, we establish that two key dimensions adults and children (aged 4 to 7 years) consider are the cost associated with a giving action and the need of the recipient, through six pre-registered experiments with Canadian and U.S. American participants. Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrate that adults' and children's third-party evaluations of generosity are sensitive to variations in each factor, across several operationalizations of cost and need in both comparative and standalone contexts, suggesting cost and need can be spontaneously evoked. However, children's responses were more consistent for need scenarios than cost scenarios. In Experiments 3 and 4, we modified our scenarios to evaluate whether variations in cost and need are considered simultaneously in both generosity evaluations and affiliative preferences. Adults' and older children's (ages 6 to 7) evaluations of generosity and affiliative preferences were sensitive to both factors, but younger children did not utilize this information systematically. Importantly, in Experiments 5 and 6, adults' and older children's generosity evaluations were only sensitive to information about cost and need when the giver's actions conferred utility to a recipient, but not when actions were self-serving. Taken together, we establish robust evidence that cost and need are considered in generosity evaluations by demonstrating that Canadian and U.S. American adults and children utilize this information consistently, spontaneously, and simultaneously.
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Affiliation(s)
- Mia Radovanovic
- Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario M5S 3G3, Canada.
| | - Tim Wei-Ting Chao
- Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario M5S 3G3, Canada
| | - Emily Onyshko
- Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario M5S 3G3, Canada; Department of Applied Psychology and Human Development, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario M5S 1V6, Canada
| | | | - Yang Leona Liu
- Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario M5S 3G3, Canada
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