You’ve probably also noticed that infants love to observe the people in their world, and learn from them rapidly! In our lab, we have been interested in how infants and young children begin to form categories of people. For example, how do they first come to notice social categories based on gender (male; female) or even race
Month: March 2018
With so much to learn in the world, are infants overwhelmed about what to focus on? We now know that infants use their natural ‘tutors’ (e.g, parents and older siblings!) as guides to what’s important. Infants pay particular attention to the things that parents take the time to show and teach them. This kind of
Developmental psychologists used to believe that for infants, ‘out of sight is out of mind.’ We now know better! Very young infants can think about objects—even hidden ones—in some sophisticated ways. Still, they have a lot to learn, and their memories for detail remain fragile. Recently, we’ve discovered that infants learn best about objects when they are
As you’ve probably noticed, very young infants would rather listen to human speech than almost anything else! But recently, we’ve discovered that listening to speech also plays an important developmental role: it gives infants a big cognitive ‘boost.’ We’ve found that when infants listen to human speech, they are more successful at cognitive tasks, like detecting