Nothing to Beat the power of Experience Which Teaches Infants Like No Other

Infants are found to tailor their new actions by using the experience from previous actions as well as understand the actions of a person well known to them.

Infants are found to tailor their new actions by using the experience from previous actions as well as understand the actions of a person well known to them according to University of Washington psychologists .

However, this ability is limited by the location in which the new action is performed.

Sharing a Bed With a Baby Does Not Raise Cot Death Risk
Researchers have found that sharing a bed with an infant doesn't elevate the risk of cot death.

"Infants' understanding of and exposure to familiar actions can boost their understanding of ambiguous action sequences. Their ability to draw on the past to interpret the present represents an important advance in their developing understanding of other people's behaviour," said Jessica Sommerville, a UW assistant professor of psychology who is also affiliated with the university's Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences.

For the study, the researchers conducted two experiments to test how well infants can use prior information.

In the first test, 48 infants received information about which of two objects a research assistant desired. Across five trials, infants consistently saw the assistant reach for, grasp and pick up one of two plastic toys (a green frog or a red fish).

FDA Sets Levels of Melamine in Infant Formula
US health authorities have raised the safety threshold for melamine for infant formula amid widespread concern over the use of the industrial chemical in Chinese dairy products.

For the second phase, the infants were randomly divided into same- and different-room conditions.

Half the babies stayed in the same room, but the setup was slightly different. This time the frog and fish each sat out of reach of the assistant on top of distinctly different colored cloths.

Afghan Children Fall Victim to a Disfiguring Disease
Doctors report that leishmaniasis, a disfiguring disease caused by parasites is on the rise in Afghantistan. Clinics are overcrowded with afflicted children.

They watched as the researcher used the cloth supporting the toy that she had previous desired to retrieve the target toy. Infants' visual attention to these events was measured, and after infants' attention declined they participated in novel test trials.

The test trials varied. Some of them featured a change in the toy the assistant went after while others featured a change in the cloth that was used by the assistant.

Prior research suggests that 10-month-old infants do not spontaneously recognize the meaning behind the cloth-pulling sequence. They used infants' visual attention to the novel test events to gauge infants' understanding of the cloth-pulling sequence.

The researchers found that infants in the same-room condition showed heightened attention to a change in the toy that the assistant retrieved rather than a change in the cloth she used.

This, according to Sommerville, suggests that the infants understood that the assistant pulled the cloth in order to obtain her desired toy, and were surprised when her intention changed.

However, infants in the different-room condition did not distinguish between the two test events.

In the second experiment half of the infants were taken out of the testing room for 30 seconds after the first phase.

Then they returned to the same room. This time both groups of infants looked significantly longer at the change in the toy the assistant pulled with the cloth.

"Our findings suggest that infants use prior information about a person's goals and desires to understand novel or ambiguous action. But they also suggest that infants may be limited in their ability to generalize this information to new contexts at 10 months of age," said Sommerville.

Source-ANI
SAV

Nothing to Beat the Power of Experience Which Teaches Infants Like No Other

Infants are found to tailor their new actions by using the experience from previous actions as well as understand the actions of a person well known to them.