International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
Environmental noise is one of the main sources of pollution in today’s modern world. Health effec... more Environmental noise is one of the main sources of pollution in today’s modern world. Health effects associated with noise depend on both environmental exposure and individuals’ noise sensitivity. However, still little is known as to why some children are more noise sensitive than others. Studies to date have focused on adult populations and have not considered both cognitive and personality factors when explaining noise sensitivity. The current research investigates individual differences in noise sensitivity among elementary school children, with the aim of shedding light on its underlying mechanisms. Study 1 (n = 112) validated a novel questionnaire assessing children’s reactions to classroom noise against two measures of noise sensitivity that are commonly used in adult populations. Study 2 (n = 237) investigated how children’s reactions to classroom noise covaried with their effortful control and prosocial skills, both measured through a teacher report. Prosocial skills were not...
In searching for hidden objects, infants younger than 12 months frequently commit the classic &qu... more In searching for hidden objects, infants younger than 12 months frequently commit the classic "A-not-B error," in which they successfully search for an object in one location (A) and then fail to search for it when it is conspicuously hidden in a new location (B). The question is why they fail to make the switch and perseverate at the first location. While these errors have often been attributed to cognitive limitations or stages of neurological development, we propose that they are consistent with the early stages of learning. We present a context-learning model of "A-not-B" search, in which learning to adopt the appropriate search strategy involves attending to appropriate contextual cues. We then present the findings of an eye-tracking experiment with 9 month-olds that behaviorally supports the predictions of our learning model.
By 8 months of age, infants use statistical regularities and perceptual cues to orient attention ... more By 8 months of age, infants use statistical regularities and perceptual cues to orient attention (e.g. Kirkham et al., 2007; Wu & Kirkham, 2010). However, it is unclear whether infants are sensitive to the reliability of individual attentional cues. In this eye-tracking study, 8-month-olds were familiarized with a reliable face, which always looked to a box where an animation appeared, and an unreliable face, which looked only 25% of the time to the box containing the animation. At test, when the animations did not appear, infants searched longer in the corner cued by the reliable face, but did not search longer in the corner cued by the unreliable face. These results suggest that even young infants can track the the reliability of potential informants and use this information to distribute attention in support of early learning.
Human infants develop a variety of attentional mechanisms that allow them to extract relevant inf... more Human infants develop a variety of attentional mechanisms that allow them to extract relevant information from a cluttered world. We know that both social and non-social cues shift infants' attention, but not how infants use these cues to learn basic events. With over 450 infants, four extensive eye-tracking studies in this thesis established a controlled paradigm for investigating how attention cues shape early learning. The results showed that infants' ability to learn about structures in their environment (i.e., predicting the appearance of audiovisual events and forming expectations about co-occurring features) is dependent on the presence and nature of attention cues. By 8 months, infants learned these events significantly better with social cues (e.g., eye gaze, infant-directed speech, expression of interest) than with non-social cues (e.g., flashing squares) or without any attentional cueing. Importantly, when presented with multiple events to learn and cued by a face...
Statistical probability theory posits that we learn about regularly-occurring events in the perce... more Statistical probability theory posits that we learn about regularly-occurring events in the perceptual environment by determining the likelihood of each event's occurrence (Aslin, Saffran, & Newport, 1998). The current study investigates infants' ability to extract properties of repetitive visual events and represent predictable combinations of visual elements. Using a novelty-preference paradigm, 2-, 5-, and 8-month-old infants were habituated to a continuous stream of colored shapes that were presented in a statistically predictable pattern, and then tested alternatively on the same sequence and a randomly-ordered sequence. The randomly-ordered sequence differed from the originally presented sequence only in between-shape transitional probabilities. At each age, infants demonstrated a significant novelty preference for the random sequence. In conjunction with Marcus, Vijayan, Rao, and Vishton (1999) and Saffran, Aslin, and Newport's (1996) work looking at statistical l...
In searching for hidden objects, infants younger than 12 months frequently commit the classic “A-... more In searching for hidden objects, infants younger than 12 months frequently commit the classic “A-not-B error, ” in which they successfully search for an object in one location (A) and then fail to search for it when it is conspicuously hidden in a new location (B). The question is why they fail to make the switch and perseverate at the first location. While these errors have often been attributed to cognitive limitations or stages of neurological development, we propose that they are consistent with the early stages of learning. We present a context-learning model of “A-not-B ” search, in which learning to adopt the appropriate search strategy involves attending to appropriate contextual cues. We then present the findings of an eye-tracking experiment with 9 month-olds that behaviorally supports the predictions of our learning model.
ABSTRACT—Greater continuity in cognition between chil-dren and adults may exist than is usually a... more ABSTRACT—Greater continuity in cognition between chil-dren and adults may exist than is usually appreciated. It was thought that after 3 to 4 years of age, the problem in switching on the dimensional-change card-sort task dis-appears. We show here, however, that if speed is used as the dependent measure, the effect of the first dimension is evident even in adults. Adults, like preschoolers, show difficulty in switching from a block of sorting by color or shape to a block of sorting by the other dimension. Nota-bly, performance throughout the session was affected by the first dimension by which stimuli were sorted. We hy-pothesize that perhaps adults never fully outgrow any of the cognitive and perceptual biases of infancy and early childhood. Other examples of such biases that appear to still be present in adults are discussed. Conversely, the
Perception involves making sense of a dynamic, multimodal environment. In the absence of mechanis... more Perception involves making sense of a dynamic, multimodal environment. In the absence of mechanisms capable of exploiting the statistical patterns in the natural world, infants would face an insurmountable computational problem. Infant statistical learning mechanisms facilitate the detection of structure. These abilities allow the infant to compute across elements in their environmental input, extracting patterns for further processing and subsequent learning. In this selective review, we summarize findings that show that statistical learning is both a broad and flexible mechanism (supporting learning from different modalities across many different content areas) and input specific (shifting computations depending on the type of input and goal of learning). We suggest that statistical learning not only provides a framework for studying language development and object knowledge in constrained laboratory settings, but also allows researchers to tackle realworld problems, such as multi...
In laboratory experiments, infants can learn patterns of features that co-occur (e.g., Fiser & As... more In laboratory experiments, infants can learn patterns of features that co-occur (e.g., Fiser & Aslin, 2002). This finding leaves two questions unanswered: What do infants do with the knowledge acquired from such statistical learning, and which patterns do infants attend to in the noisy and cluttered world outside of the laboratory? Here, we show that 9-month-old infants form expectations about co-occurring features remaining fused, an essential skill for object individuation and recognition (e.g., Goldstone, 2000; Schyns & Rodet, 1997). We also show that though social cues may temporarily detract attention away from learning events, they appear to stimulate infants to display learning better in complex situations than when infants learn on their own without attention cues. These findings suggest that infants can use feature co-occurrence to learn about objects and that social cues shape such foundational learning in a noisy environment during infancy.
UNICEF estimates that 1.6 billion children across the world have had their education impacted by ... more UNICEF estimates that 1.6 billion children across the world have had their education impacted by COVID-19 and have attempted to continue their learning at home. With ample evidence showing a negative impact of noise on academic achievement within schools, the current pre-registered study set out to determine what aspects of the home environment might be affecting these students. Adolescents aged 11–18 took part online, with 129 adolescents included after passing a headphone screening task. They filled out a sociodemographic questionnaire, followed by a home environment and noise questionnaire. Participants then completed three executive function tasks (the Flanker, the Backward Digit Span, and the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test) while listening to a soundtrack of either white noise or home-like environmental noise. For purposes of analysis, based on the noise questionnaire, participants were separated into quieter and noisier homes. Results revealed that measures of the home environmen...
Classrooms are noisy, yet little is known about pupils’ subjective reactions to noise. We surveye... more Classrooms are noisy, yet little is known about pupils’ subjective reactions to noise. We surveyed 112 children between 8.70 and 11.38 years of age and extracted five dimensions in their reactions to noise by factorial analyses: (1) perceived classroom loudness, (2) hearing difficulties, (3) attention capture, (4) interference, (5) annoyance from noise. Structural Equation Models were run to better understand interindividual differences in noise interference and annoyance. Children reporting hearing and switching difficulties experienced more interference and annoyance from noise. Children who had a greater propensity for mind-wandering also experienced more interference from noise, but were annoyed by noise only to the extent that it produced interference—the relationship between mind-wandering and noise annoyance was indirect, and not direct, as was the case for reported hearing and switching difficulties. We suggest that the distinction between annoyance and interference has theo...
Behavioural researchers are increasingly conducting their studies online to gain access to large ... more Behavioural researchers are increasingly conducting their studies online to gain access to large and diverse samples that would be difficult to get in a laboratory environment. However, there are technical access barriers to building experiments online, and web-browsers can present problems for consistent timing – an important issue with reaction time-sensitive measures. For example, to ensure accuracy and test-retest reliability in presentation and response recording, experimenters need a working knowledge of programming languages such as JavaScript. We review some of the previous and current tools for online behavioural research, and how well they address the issues of usability and timing. We then present The Gorilla Experiment Builder (gorilla.sc) a fully tooled experiment authoring and deployment platform, designed to resolve many timing issues, and make reliable online experimentation open and accessible to a wider range of technical abilities. In order to demonstrate the plat...
Differential experience leads infants to have perceptual processing advantages for own- over othe... more Differential experience leads infants to have perceptual processing advantages for own- over other-race faces, but whether this experience has downstream consequences is unknown. Three experiments examined whether 7-month-olds (range = 5.9-8.5 months; N = 96) use gaze from own- versus other-race adults to anticipate events. When gaze predicted an event's occurrence with 100% reliability, 7-month-olds followed both adults equally; with 25% (chance) reliability, neither was followed. However, with 50% (uncertain) reliability, infants followed own- over other-race gaze. Differential face race experience may thus affect how infants use social cues from own- versus other-race adults for learning. Such findings suggest that infants integrate online statistical reliability information with prior knowledge of own versus other race to guide social interaction and learning.
This study investigates whether infants are sensitive to backward and forward transitional probab... more This study investigates whether infants are sensitive to backward and forward transitional probabilities within temporal and spatial visual streams. Two groups of 8-month-old infants were familiarized with an artificial grammar of shapes, comprising backward and forward base pairs (i.e. two shapes linked by strong backward or forward transitional probability) and part-pairs (i.e. two shapes with weak transitional probabilities in both directions). One group viewed the continuous visual stream as a temporal sequence, while the other group viewed the same stream as a spatial array. Following familiarization, infants looked longer at test trials containing part-pairs than base pairs, although they had appeared with equal frequency during familiarization. This pattern of looking time was evident for both forward and backward pairs, in both the temporal and spatial conditions. Further, differences in looking time to part-pairs that were consistent or inconsistent with the predictive dire...
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
Environmental noise is one of the main sources of pollution in today’s modern world. Health effec... more Environmental noise is one of the main sources of pollution in today’s modern world. Health effects associated with noise depend on both environmental exposure and individuals’ noise sensitivity. However, still little is known as to why some children are more noise sensitive than others. Studies to date have focused on adult populations and have not considered both cognitive and personality factors when explaining noise sensitivity. The current research investigates individual differences in noise sensitivity among elementary school children, with the aim of shedding light on its underlying mechanisms. Study 1 (n = 112) validated a novel questionnaire assessing children’s reactions to classroom noise against two measures of noise sensitivity that are commonly used in adult populations. Study 2 (n = 237) investigated how children’s reactions to classroom noise covaried with their effortful control and prosocial skills, both measured through a teacher report. Prosocial skills were not...
In searching for hidden objects, infants younger than 12 months frequently commit the classic &qu... more In searching for hidden objects, infants younger than 12 months frequently commit the classic "A-not-B error," in which they successfully search for an object in one location (A) and then fail to search for it when it is conspicuously hidden in a new location (B). The question is why they fail to make the switch and perseverate at the first location. While these errors have often been attributed to cognitive limitations or stages of neurological development, we propose that they are consistent with the early stages of learning. We present a context-learning model of "A-not-B" search, in which learning to adopt the appropriate search strategy involves attending to appropriate contextual cues. We then present the findings of an eye-tracking experiment with 9 month-olds that behaviorally supports the predictions of our learning model.
By 8 months of age, infants use statistical regularities and perceptual cues to orient attention ... more By 8 months of age, infants use statistical regularities and perceptual cues to orient attention (e.g. Kirkham et al., 2007; Wu & Kirkham, 2010). However, it is unclear whether infants are sensitive to the reliability of individual attentional cues. In this eye-tracking study, 8-month-olds were familiarized with a reliable face, which always looked to a box where an animation appeared, and an unreliable face, which looked only 25% of the time to the box containing the animation. At test, when the animations did not appear, infants searched longer in the corner cued by the reliable face, but did not search longer in the corner cued by the unreliable face. These results suggest that even young infants can track the the reliability of potential informants and use this information to distribute attention in support of early learning.
Human infants develop a variety of attentional mechanisms that allow them to extract relevant inf... more Human infants develop a variety of attentional mechanisms that allow them to extract relevant information from a cluttered world. We know that both social and non-social cues shift infants' attention, but not how infants use these cues to learn basic events. With over 450 infants, four extensive eye-tracking studies in this thesis established a controlled paradigm for investigating how attention cues shape early learning. The results showed that infants' ability to learn about structures in their environment (i.e., predicting the appearance of audiovisual events and forming expectations about co-occurring features) is dependent on the presence and nature of attention cues. By 8 months, infants learned these events significantly better with social cues (e.g., eye gaze, infant-directed speech, expression of interest) than with non-social cues (e.g., flashing squares) or without any attentional cueing. Importantly, when presented with multiple events to learn and cued by a face...
Statistical probability theory posits that we learn about regularly-occurring events in the perce... more Statistical probability theory posits that we learn about regularly-occurring events in the perceptual environment by determining the likelihood of each event's occurrence (Aslin, Saffran, & Newport, 1998). The current study investigates infants' ability to extract properties of repetitive visual events and represent predictable combinations of visual elements. Using a novelty-preference paradigm, 2-, 5-, and 8-month-old infants were habituated to a continuous stream of colored shapes that were presented in a statistically predictable pattern, and then tested alternatively on the same sequence and a randomly-ordered sequence. The randomly-ordered sequence differed from the originally presented sequence only in between-shape transitional probabilities. At each age, infants demonstrated a significant novelty preference for the random sequence. In conjunction with Marcus, Vijayan, Rao, and Vishton (1999) and Saffran, Aslin, and Newport's (1996) work looking at statistical l...
In searching for hidden objects, infants younger than 12 months frequently commit the classic “A-... more In searching for hidden objects, infants younger than 12 months frequently commit the classic “A-not-B error, ” in which they successfully search for an object in one location (A) and then fail to search for it when it is conspicuously hidden in a new location (B). The question is why they fail to make the switch and perseverate at the first location. While these errors have often been attributed to cognitive limitations or stages of neurological development, we propose that they are consistent with the early stages of learning. We present a context-learning model of “A-not-B ” search, in which learning to adopt the appropriate search strategy involves attending to appropriate contextual cues. We then present the findings of an eye-tracking experiment with 9 month-olds that behaviorally supports the predictions of our learning model.
ABSTRACT—Greater continuity in cognition between chil-dren and adults may exist than is usually a... more ABSTRACT—Greater continuity in cognition between chil-dren and adults may exist than is usually appreciated. It was thought that after 3 to 4 years of age, the problem in switching on the dimensional-change card-sort task dis-appears. We show here, however, that if speed is used as the dependent measure, the effect of the first dimension is evident even in adults. Adults, like preschoolers, show difficulty in switching from a block of sorting by color or shape to a block of sorting by the other dimension. Nota-bly, performance throughout the session was affected by the first dimension by which stimuli were sorted. We hy-pothesize that perhaps adults never fully outgrow any of the cognitive and perceptual biases of infancy and early childhood. Other examples of such biases that appear to still be present in adults are discussed. Conversely, the
Perception involves making sense of a dynamic, multimodal environment. In the absence of mechanis... more Perception involves making sense of a dynamic, multimodal environment. In the absence of mechanisms capable of exploiting the statistical patterns in the natural world, infants would face an insurmountable computational problem. Infant statistical learning mechanisms facilitate the detection of structure. These abilities allow the infant to compute across elements in their environmental input, extracting patterns for further processing and subsequent learning. In this selective review, we summarize findings that show that statistical learning is both a broad and flexible mechanism (supporting learning from different modalities across many different content areas) and input specific (shifting computations depending on the type of input and goal of learning). We suggest that statistical learning not only provides a framework for studying language development and object knowledge in constrained laboratory settings, but also allows researchers to tackle realworld problems, such as multi...
In laboratory experiments, infants can learn patterns of features that co-occur (e.g., Fiser & As... more In laboratory experiments, infants can learn patterns of features that co-occur (e.g., Fiser & Aslin, 2002). This finding leaves two questions unanswered: What do infants do with the knowledge acquired from such statistical learning, and which patterns do infants attend to in the noisy and cluttered world outside of the laboratory? Here, we show that 9-month-old infants form expectations about co-occurring features remaining fused, an essential skill for object individuation and recognition (e.g., Goldstone, 2000; Schyns & Rodet, 1997). We also show that though social cues may temporarily detract attention away from learning events, they appear to stimulate infants to display learning better in complex situations than when infants learn on their own without attention cues. These findings suggest that infants can use feature co-occurrence to learn about objects and that social cues shape such foundational learning in a noisy environment during infancy.
UNICEF estimates that 1.6 billion children across the world have had their education impacted by ... more UNICEF estimates that 1.6 billion children across the world have had their education impacted by COVID-19 and have attempted to continue their learning at home. With ample evidence showing a negative impact of noise on academic achievement within schools, the current pre-registered study set out to determine what aspects of the home environment might be affecting these students. Adolescents aged 11–18 took part online, with 129 adolescents included after passing a headphone screening task. They filled out a sociodemographic questionnaire, followed by a home environment and noise questionnaire. Participants then completed three executive function tasks (the Flanker, the Backward Digit Span, and the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test) while listening to a soundtrack of either white noise or home-like environmental noise. For purposes of analysis, based on the noise questionnaire, participants were separated into quieter and noisier homes. Results revealed that measures of the home environmen...
Classrooms are noisy, yet little is known about pupils’ subjective reactions to noise. We surveye... more Classrooms are noisy, yet little is known about pupils’ subjective reactions to noise. We surveyed 112 children between 8.70 and 11.38 years of age and extracted five dimensions in their reactions to noise by factorial analyses: (1) perceived classroom loudness, (2) hearing difficulties, (3) attention capture, (4) interference, (5) annoyance from noise. Structural Equation Models were run to better understand interindividual differences in noise interference and annoyance. Children reporting hearing and switching difficulties experienced more interference and annoyance from noise. Children who had a greater propensity for mind-wandering also experienced more interference from noise, but were annoyed by noise only to the extent that it produced interference—the relationship between mind-wandering and noise annoyance was indirect, and not direct, as was the case for reported hearing and switching difficulties. We suggest that the distinction between annoyance and interference has theo...
Behavioural researchers are increasingly conducting their studies online to gain access to large ... more Behavioural researchers are increasingly conducting their studies online to gain access to large and diverse samples that would be difficult to get in a laboratory environment. However, there are technical access barriers to building experiments online, and web-browsers can present problems for consistent timing – an important issue with reaction time-sensitive measures. For example, to ensure accuracy and test-retest reliability in presentation and response recording, experimenters need a working knowledge of programming languages such as JavaScript. We review some of the previous and current tools for online behavioural research, and how well they address the issues of usability and timing. We then present The Gorilla Experiment Builder (gorilla.sc) a fully tooled experiment authoring and deployment platform, designed to resolve many timing issues, and make reliable online experimentation open and accessible to a wider range of technical abilities. In order to demonstrate the plat...
Differential experience leads infants to have perceptual processing advantages for own- over othe... more Differential experience leads infants to have perceptual processing advantages for own- over other-race faces, but whether this experience has downstream consequences is unknown. Three experiments examined whether 7-month-olds (range = 5.9-8.5 months; N = 96) use gaze from own- versus other-race adults to anticipate events. When gaze predicted an event's occurrence with 100% reliability, 7-month-olds followed both adults equally; with 25% (chance) reliability, neither was followed. However, with 50% (uncertain) reliability, infants followed own- over other-race gaze. Differential face race experience may thus affect how infants use social cues from own- versus other-race adults for learning. Such findings suggest that infants integrate online statistical reliability information with prior knowledge of own versus other race to guide social interaction and learning.
This study investigates whether infants are sensitive to backward and forward transitional probab... more This study investigates whether infants are sensitive to backward and forward transitional probabilities within temporal and spatial visual streams. Two groups of 8-month-old infants were familiarized with an artificial grammar of shapes, comprising backward and forward base pairs (i.e. two shapes linked by strong backward or forward transitional probability) and part-pairs (i.e. two shapes with weak transitional probabilities in both directions). One group viewed the continuous visual stream as a temporal sequence, while the other group viewed the same stream as a spatial array. Following familiarization, infants looked longer at test trials containing part-pairs than base pairs, although they had appeared with equal frequency during familiarization. This pattern of looking time was evident for both forward and backward pairs, in both the temporal and spatial conditions. Further, differences in looking time to part-pairs that were consistent or inconsistent with the predictive dire...
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