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Thiele M, Kalinke S, Michel C, Haun DBM. Direct and Observed Joint Attention Modulate 9-Month-Old Infants' Object Encoding. Open Mind (Camb) 2023; 7:917-946. [PMID: 38053630 PMCID: PMC10695677 DOI: 10.1162/opmi_a_00114] [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: 07/04/2023] [Accepted: 09/25/2023] [Indexed: 12/07/2023] Open
Abstract
Sharing joint visual attention to an object with another person biases infants to encode qualitatively different object properties compared to a parallel attention situation lacking interpersonal sharedness. This study investigated whether merely observing joint attention amongst others shows the same effect. In Experiment 1 (first-party replication experiment), N = 36 9-month-old German infants were presented with a violation-of-expectation task during which they saw an adult looking either in the direction of the infant (eye contact) or to the side (no eye contact) before and after looking at an object. Following an occlusion phase, infants saw one of three different outcomes: the same object reappeared at the same screen position (no change), the same object reappeared at a novel position (location change), or a novel object appeared at the same position (identity change). We found that infants looked longer at identity change outcomes (vs. no changes) in the "eye contact" condition compared to the "no eye contact" condition. In contrast, infants' response to location changes was not influenced by the presence of eye contact. In Experiment 2, we found the same result pattern in a matched third-party design, in which another sample of N = 36 9-month-old German infants saw two adults establishing eye contact (or no eye contact) before alternating their gaze between an object and their partner without ever looking at the infant. These findings indicate that infants learn similarly from interacting with others and observing others interact, suggesting that infant cultural learning extends beyond infant-directed interactions.
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Affiliation(s)
- Maleen Thiele
- Department of Comparative Cultural Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
| | - Steven Kalinke
- Department of Comparative Cultural Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
| | - Christine Michel
- Department of Early Child Development and Culture, Leipzig University, Leipzig, Germany
- SRH University of Applied Health Sciences, Gera, Germany
| | - Daniel B. M. Haun
- Department of Comparative Cultural Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
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Kampis D, Southgate V. Altercentric Cognition: How Others Influence Our Cognitive Processing. Trends Cogn Sci 2020; 24:945-959. [PMID: 32981846 DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2020.09.003] [Citation(s) in RCA: 30] [Impact Index Per Article: 7.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/12/2020] [Revised: 09/01/2020] [Accepted: 09/02/2020] [Indexed: 12/18/2022]
Abstract
Humans are ultrasocial, yet, theories of cognition have often been occupied with the solitary mind. Over the past decade, an increasing volume of work has revealed how individual cognition is influenced by the presence of others. Not only do we rapidly identify others in our environment, but we also align our attention with their attention, which influences what we perceive, represent, and remember, even when our immediate goals do not involve coordination. Here, we refer to the human sensitivity to others and to the targets and content of their attention as 'altercentrism'; and aim to bring seemingly disparate findings together, suggesting that they are all reflections of the altercentric nature of human cognition.
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Affiliation(s)
- Dora Kampis
- Department of Psychology, University of Copenhagen, Øster Farimagsgade 2A, 1353 Copenhagen, Denmark.
| | - Victoria Southgate
- Department of Psychology, University of Copenhagen, Øster Farimagsgade 2A, 1353 Copenhagen, Denmark.
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Ishikawa M, Yoshimura M, Sato H, Itakura S. Effects of attentional behaviours on infant visual preferences and object choice. Cogn Process 2019; 20:317-324. [PMID: 30955152 DOI: 10.1007/s10339-019-00918-x] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/14/2018] [Accepted: 03/29/2019] [Indexed: 11/29/2022]
Abstract
Many developmental studies have examined the effects of joint attention. However, it has been difficult to compare effects of initiating joint attention and responding to joint attention in infants. Here, we compared the effects of initiating joint attention and responding joint attention on object information processing, object preference, and facial preferences in infants. Thirty-seven infants (10 to 12 months of age) were shown stimuli in which a female gazed towards or away from an object. Participants were assigned to initiating joint attention condition or responding joint attention condition. Results suggest that initiating joint attention promoted object information processing, whereas responding joint attention did not. Both joint attention conditions affected the facial preference for the person who engaged joint attention. In addition, after initiating joint attention, infants chose objects gazed by other person more often than after responding joint attention. It appears that attentional behaviours that precede the perception of certain stimuli affect infants' cognitive responses to those stimuli.
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Affiliation(s)
- Mitsuhiko Ishikawa
- Department of Psychology, Graduate School of Letters, Kyoto University, Yoshida-Honmachi, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto, 606-8501, Japan.
| | | | - Hiroki Sato
- Department of Bioscience and Engineering, Shibaura Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan
| | - Shoji Itakura
- Department of Psychology, Graduate School of Letters, Kyoto University, Yoshida-Honmachi, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto, 606-8501, Japan
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Gredebäck G, Astor K, Fawcett C. Gaze Following Is Not Dependent on Ostensive Cues: A Critical Test of Natural Pedagogy. Child Dev 2018; 89:2091-2098. [PMID: 29315501 DOI: 10.1111/cdev.13026] [Citation(s) in RCA: 38] [Impact Index Per Article: 6.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/29/2022]
Abstract
The theory of natural pedagogy stipulates that infants follow gaze because they are sensitive to the communicative intent of others. According to this theory, gaze following should be present if, and only if, accompanied by at least one of a set of specific ostensive cues. The current article demonstrates gaze following in a range of contexts, both with and without expressions of communicative intent in a between-subjects design with a large sample of 6-month-old infants (n = 94). Thus, conceptually replicating prior results from Szufnarowska et al. (2014) and falsifying a central pillar of the natural pedagogy theory. The results suggest that there are opportunities to learn from others' gaze independently of their displayed communicative intent.
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Pomiechowska B, Csibra G. Motor activation during action perception depends on action interpretation. Neuropsychologia 2017; 105:84-91. [PMID: 28189494 PMCID: PMC5447367 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2017.01.032] [Citation(s) in RCA: 13] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/14/2016] [Revised: 01/26/2017] [Accepted: 01/30/2017] [Indexed: 10/20/2022]
Abstract
Since the discovery of motor mirroring, the involvement of the motor system in action interpretation has been widely discussed. While some theories proposed that motor mirroring underlies human action understanding, others suggested that it is a corollary of action interpretation. We put these two accounts to the test by employing superficially similar actions that invite radically different interpretations of the underlying intentions. Using an action-observation task, we assessed motor activation (as indexed by the suppression of the EEG mu rhythm) in response to actions typically interpreted as instrumental (e.g., grasping) or referential (e.g., pointing) towards an object. Only the observation of instrumental actions resulted in enhanced mu suppression. In addition, the exposure to grasping actions failed to elicit mu suppression when they were preceded by speech, suggesting that the presence of communicative signals modulated the interpretation of the observed actions. These results suggest that the involvement of sensorimotor cortices during action processing is conditional on a particular (instrumental) action interpretation, and that action interpretation relies on inferential processes and top-down mechanisms that are implemented outside of the motor system.
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Affiliation(s)
- Barbara Pomiechowska
- Cognitive Development Center, Department of Cognitive Science, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary.
| | - Gergely Csibra
- Cognitive Development Center, Department of Cognitive Science, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary; Department of Psychological Sciences, Birkbeck, University of London, London, UK
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Abstract
Language exerts a powerful influence on our concepts. We review evidence documenting the developmental origins of a precocious link between language and object categories in very young infants. This collection of studies documents a cascading process in which early links between language and cognition provide the foundation for later, more precise ones. We propose that, early in life, language promotes categorization at least in part through its status as a social, communicative signal. But over the first year, infants home in on the referential power of language and, by their second year, begin teasing apart distinct kinds of names (e.g. nouns, adjectives) and their relation to distinct kinds of concepts (e.g. object categories, properties). To complement this proposal, we also relate this evidence to several alternative accounts of language's effect on categorization, appealing to similarity ('labels-as-features'), familiarity ('auditory overshadowing'), and communicative biases ('natural pedagogy').
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Oláh K, Elekes F, Turcsán B, Kis O, Topál J. Social Pre-treatment Modulates Attention Allocation to Transient and Stable Object Properties. Front Psychol 2016; 7:1619. [PMID: 27826267 PMCID: PMC5078729 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01619] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/26/2016] [Accepted: 10/04/2016] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Increasing evidence suggests that ostensive-communicative signals in social learning situations enable observers to focus their attention on the intrinsic features of an object (e.g., color) at the expense of ignoring transient object properties (e.g., location). Here we investigated whether off-line social cues, presented as social primes, have the same power to modulate attention allocation to stable and transient object properties as on-line ostensive-communicative cues. The first part of the experiment consisted of a pre-treatment phase, where adult male participants either received intensive social stimulation or were asked to perform non-social actions. Then, they participated in a change detection test, where they watched pairs of pictures depicting an array of five objects. On the second picture, a change occurred compared to the first picture. One object changed either its location (moving forward or backward) or was replaced by another object, and participants were required to indicate where the change had happened. We found that participants detected the change more successfully if it had happened in the location of the object; however, this difference was reduced following a socially intense pre-treatment phase. The results are discussed in relation to the claims of the natural pedagogy theory.
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Affiliation(s)
- Katalin Oláh
- Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and Psychology, Research Centre for Natural Sciences, Hungarian Academy of SciencesBudapest, Hungary; Institute of Psychology, Eötvös Loránd UniversityBudapest, Hungary
| | - Fruzsina Elekes
- Institute of Psychology, Eötvös Loránd UniversityBudapest, Hungary; Cognitive Development Center, Central European UniversityBudapest, Hungary
| | - Borbála Turcsán
- Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and Psychology, Research Centre for Natural Sciences, Hungarian Academy of Sciences Budapest, Hungary
| | - Orsolya Kis
- Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and Psychology, Research Centre for Natural Sciences, Hungarian Academy of SciencesBudapest, Hungary; Department of Cognitive Science, Budapest University of Technology and EconomicsBudapest, Hungary
| | - József Topál
- Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and Psychology, Research Centre for Natural Sciences, Hungarian Academy of Sciences Budapest, Hungary
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Marno H, Davelaar EJ, Csibra G. An object memory bias induced by communicative reference. Acta Psychol (Amst) 2016; 163:88-96. [PMID: 26629673 DOI: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2015.11.005] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/19/2015] [Revised: 11/10/2015] [Accepted: 11/16/2015] [Indexed: 11/25/2022] Open
Abstract
In humans, a good proportion of knowledge, including knowledge about objects and object kinds, is acquired via social learning by direct communication from others. If communicative signals raise the expectation of social learning about objects, intrinsic (permanent) features that support object recognition are relevant to store into memory, while extrinsic (accidental) object properties can be ignored. We investigated this hypothesis by instructing participants to memorise shape-colour associations that constituted either an extrinsic object property (the colour of the box that contained the object, Experiment 1) or an intrinsic one (the colour of the object, Experiment 2). Compared to a non-communicative context, communicative presentation of the objects impaired participants' performance when they recalled extrinsic object properties, while their incidental memory of the intrinsic shape-colour associations was not affected. Communicative signals had no effect on performance when the task required the memorisation of intrinsic object properties. The negative effect of communicative reference on the memory of extrinsic properties was also confirmed in Experiment 3, where this property was object location. Such a memory bias suggests that referent objects in communication tend to be seen as representatives of their kind rather than as individuals.
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Csibra G, Shamsudheen R. Nonverbal generics: human infants interpret objects as symbols of object kinds. Annu Rev Psychol 2015. [PMID: 25251493 DOI: 10.1146/annurev‐psych‐010814‐015232] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/09/2022]
Abstract
Human infants are involved in communicative interactions with others well before they start to speak or understand language. It is generally thought that this communication is useful for establishing interpersonal relations and supporting joint activities, but, in the absence of symbolic functions that language provides, these early communicative contexts do not allow infants to learn about the world. However, recent studies suggest that when someone demonstrates something using an object as the medium of instruction, infants can conceive the object as an exemplar of the whole class of objects of the same kind. Thus, an object, just like a word, can play the role of a symbol that stands for something else than itself, and infants can learn general knowledge about a kind of object from nonverbal communication about a single item of that kind. This rudimentary symbolic capacity may be one of the roots of the development of symbolic understanding in children.
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Affiliation(s)
- Gergely Csibra
- Cognitive Development Center, Central European University, Budapest 1051 Hungary; ,
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Csibra G, Shamsudheen R. Nonverbal generics: human infants interpret objects as symbols of object kinds. Annu Rev Psychol 2014; 66:689-710. [PMID: 25251493 DOI: 10.1146/annurev-psych-010814-015232] [Citation(s) in RCA: 31] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/09/2022]
Abstract
Human infants are involved in communicative interactions with others well before they start to speak or understand language. It is generally thought that this communication is useful for establishing interpersonal relations and supporting joint activities, but, in the absence of symbolic functions that language provides, these early communicative contexts do not allow infants to learn about the world. However, recent studies suggest that when someone demonstrates something using an object as the medium of instruction, infants can conceive the object as an exemplar of the whole class of objects of the same kind. Thus, an object, just like a word, can play the role of a symbol that stands for something else than itself, and infants can learn general knowledge about a kind of object from nonverbal communication about a single item of that kind. This rudimentary symbolic capacity may be one of the roots of the development of symbolic understanding in children.
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Affiliation(s)
- Gergely Csibra
- Cognitive Development Center, Central European University, Budapest 1051 Hungary; ,
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