Gemma Taylor

Eye tracking infants : investigating the role of attention during learning on recognition memory

In the present study, eye tracker methodology was used to explore whether there were age-related changes in the focus of infant attention during a learning event and subsequent recognition memory for event features. Six- and 9-month old infants watched a video of an adult demonstrating a sequence of actions with an object while visual attention was recorded using an eye tracker. At both ages, attention was focused primarily on the object and person, with the background attended to for approximately 12% of their viewing time. Recognition memory for the person, object and background from the video was assessed immediately using a Visual Paired Comparison procedure. Despite focusing on the central features while watching the target video, infants showed only limited evidence of recognition memory for the individual components of the event. Taken together, these findings suggest that the early age-related changes in memory performance seen in the literature may not be the result of age-related changes in attentional focus during encoding.

The Dimensional Divide: Learning from TV and Touchscreens During Early Childhood

As children’s exposure to touchscreen technology and other digital media increases, so does the need to understand the conditions under which children are able to learn from this technology. The prevalence of screen media in the lives of young children has increased significantly over the last two decades. The use of touchscreen devices among 2–4-year-olds in the USA increased from 39 to 80 % from 2011 to 2013 (Rideout, 2013). Despite frequent engagement with these devices, it is widely recognized that children exhibit a transfer deficit, a term coined to denote children’s consistently poorer learning from television and touchscreens relative to face-to-face interaction (see Barr, Developmental review 30(2):128–154, 2010; Barr, Child Development Perspectives 7(4):205–210, 2013). In this chapter, we focus on understanding the transfer deficit when children engage in imitative learning from touchscreens and television (e.g., Dickerson et al., Developmental Psychobiology 55(7):719–732, 2013, Moser et al., Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 137:137–155, 2015; Zack et al., British Journal of Developmental Psychology 27(Pt 1):13–26, 2009, Zack et al., Scandinavian Journal of Psychology 54(1):20–25, 2013; Zimmermann et al., Child Development, in press). Specifically, we discuss the role of child experience, perceptual and cognitive constraints, transfer distance, and social scaffolding in the transfer deficit. We conclude with lessons for parents and early educators regarding the strategies that may enhance learning across the dimensional divide.

Infant and adult visual attention during an imitation demonstration

Deferred imitation tasks have shown that manipulations at encoding can enhance infant learning and memory performance within an age, suggesting that brain maturation alone cannot fully account for all developmental changes in early memory abilities. The present study investigated whether changes in the focus of attention during learning might contribute to improving memory abilities during infancy. Infants aged 6, 9, and 12 months, and an adult comparison group, watched a video of a puppet imitation demonstration while visual behavior was recorded on an eye tracker. Overall, infants spent less time attending to the video than adults, and distributed their gaze more equally across the demonstrator and puppet stimulus. In contrast, adults directed their gaze primarily to the puppet. When infants were tested for their behavioral recall of the target actions, “imitators” were shown to have increased attention to the person and decreased attention to the background compared to “non-imitators.” These results suggest that attention during learning is related to memory outcome and that changes in attention may be one mechanism by which manipulations to the learning event may enhance infant recall memory.

Word for word

How well children learn words is influenced by many things, including the environment and the manner in which adults speak to them. Communication experts Dr Rebecca Frost, Dr Katherine Twomey, Dr Gemma Taylor, Professor Gert Westermann and Professor Padraic Monaghan explain

Exploring patterns of visual attention during learning

In Pavlovian fear conditioning, an initially neutral stimulus predicts the arrival of an aversive stimulus at a fixed time interval. Accumulating evidence indicates that in associative learning temp ...

Nursery Chains: Family ties

Working with a family member can offer many benefits. However, accusations of favouritism and higher expectations must be resolved for such relationships to prosper, as Gemma Taylor finds out.

Enabling Environments: Outdoors - Shore thing

Children can go to the beach every day at a nursery with its own idea of free flow. Gemma Taylor reports.