Petra Hauf

Infant Pupil Diameter Changes in Response to Others' Positive and Negative Emotions

It has been suggested that infants resonate emotionally to others positive and negative affect displays, and that these responses become stronger towards emotions with negative valence around the age of 12-months. In this study we measured 6- and 12-month-old infants changes in pupil diameter when presented with the image and sound of peers experiencing happiness, distress and an emotionally neutral state. For all participants the perception of anothers distress triggered larger pupil diameters. Perceiving others happiness also induced larger pupil diameters but for shorter time intervals. Importantly, we also found evidence for an asymmetry in autonomous arousal towards positive versus negative emotional displays. Larger pupil sizes for anothers distress compared to anothers happiness were recorded shortly after stimulus onset for the older infants, and in a later time window for the 6-month-olds. These findings suggest that arousal responses for negative as well as for positive emotions are present in the second half of the first postnatal year. Importantly, an asymmetry with stronger responses for negative emotions seems to be already present at this age.

The Microstructure of Infants' Gaze as They View Adult Shifts in Overt Attention.

We presented infants (5, 6, 9, and 12 months old) with movies in which a female model turned toward and fixated 1 of 2 toys placed on a table. Infants gaze was measured using a Tobii 1750 eye tracker. Six-, 9-, and 12-month-olds first gaze shift from the models face (after the model started turning) was directed to the attended toy. The 5-month-olds performed at random. Following this initial response, 5-, 6-, and 9-month-olds performed more gaze shifts to the attended target; 12-month-olds performed at random. Infants at all ages displayed longer looking times to the attended toy. We discuss a number of explanations for 5-month-olds ability to follow a shift in overt attention by an adult after an initially random response, including the possibility that infants initial gaze response strengthens the representation of the objects in the peripheral visual field.

Action-effect anticipation in infant action control.

There is increasing evidence that action effects play a crucial role in action understanding and action control not only in adults but also in infants. Most of the research in infants focused on the learning of action–effect contingencies or how action effects help infants to infer goals in other persons’ actions. In contrast, the present research aimed at demonstrating that infants control their own actions by action–effect anticipation once they know about specific action–effect relations. About 7 and 9-month olds observed an experimenter demonstrating two actions that differed regarding the action–effect assignment. Either a red-button press or a blue-button press or no button press elicited interesting acoustical and visual effects. The 9-month olds produced the effect action at first, with shorter latency and longer duration sustaining a direct impact of action–effect anticipation on action control. In 7-month olds the differences due to action–effect manipulation were less profound indicating developmental changes at this age.

Object processing during a joint gaze following task

To investigate object processing in a gaze following task, 12-month-old infants were presented with 4 movies in which a female model turned and looked at one of two objects. This was followed by 2 test trials showing the two objects alone without the model. Eye movements were recorded with a Tobii-1750 eye tracker. Infants reliably followed gaze and displayed longer looking times towards the attended object when the model was present. During the first test trial infants displayed a brief novelty preference for the unattended object. These findings suggest that enhanced object processing is a temporarily restricted phenomenon that has little effect on 12-month-old infants long-term interaction with the environment.

Reflective practice in service learning: possibilities and limitations

Purpose – The paper seeks to promote the integration of reflective learning within a broader service learning pedagogy at the undergraduate university level. Furthermore, it aims to illustrate various models for service learning that span multiple academic disciplines.Design/methodology/approach – The paper illustrates three ways in which reflective learning can be used to enhance the learning potential of service learning pedagogy. The subjective experiences inform its own stories that it presents as examples, supported as they are by the findings of prior empirical studies.Findings – The paper believes that multi‐dimensional learning has been achieved in each of the three examples presented. Service learning extends the academic learning of students and allows for personal and societal learning to occur, not simply as a result of having a service experience, but of spending time reflecting on it.Practical implications – Practical implications are particular to the students themselves, as the service exp...

Infants' Perception of Goal-Directed Actions on Video.

Imitation studies and object search studies show that infants have difficulties using action information presented on video to guide their own behaviour. The present study investigated whether infants also have problems interpreting information shown on video relative to real live information. It was examined whether 6-month-olds interpret an action with a salient action effect as goal-directed when it is performed by an actor on a video-screen and when it is performed by a live actor. A video presentation of a goal-directed action display was presented to one group of infants, and another group received the same action display, matched in all details, live on a stage. Results indicate that 6-month-olds in the video group as well as in the live group interpreted the human action as goal-directed. Moreover, comparison across both groups revealed no difference in the overall looking pattern between the video and the live presentation group. Thus, our findings show that infants as young as 6 months of age can take important information from video clips and interpret televised actions in meaningful ways that is equivalent to their interpretation of live actions.

Student learning through service learning: Effects on academic development, civic responsibility, interpersonal skills and practical skills

Although anecdotal evidence and research alike espouse the benefits of service learning, some researchers have suggested that more rigorous testing is required in order to determine its true effect on students. This is particularly true in the case of academic development, which has been inconsistently linked to service learning. It has been proposed that this discrepancy is due to three complications: grades not reflecting higher order thinking skills, self-selection bias, and different grading methods. The study described in this article attempted to circumvent these complications using a test–retest methodology and measuring academic development in three ways: course grades, an assignment that directly tested course-specific comprehension, and self-reported improvement. In addition, improvements in civic responsibility, interpersonal skills, and practical skills were measured via self-report. Although students who participated in service learning self-reported greater improvement in civic responsibility, interpersonal skills, and academic development, they only demonstrated more academic development in terms of concrete course concepts, showing no differences in final examination marks or generation of detailed examples. These findings suggest that academic improvement through service learning may not be adequately assessed by typical methods used to evaluate academic development at universities.

Infants' perception and production of intentional actions.

Human beings act and interact with their social environment. Thus, it is important not only to understand other individuals actions, but also to control ones own actions. To understand intentional actions one needs to detect goals in the perceived actions of others as well as to control ones own movements in order to achieve these goals through action production. After a short review of recent studies on the development of action understanding during the first years of life, the role of action effects for action understanding is discussed. In a series of experiments the exchange between action perception and action production is demonstrated, its implications for understanding intentional actions are highlighted.

Infants Use Compression Information to Infer Objects’ Weights: Examining Cognition, Exploration, and Prospective Action in a Preferential-Reaching Task

The present research used a preferential-reaching task to examine whether 9- and 11-month-olds (n=144) could infer the relative weights of two objects resting on a soft, compressible platform. Experiment 1 established that infants reached preferentially for the lighter of 2 boxes. In Experiments 2-4, infants saw 2 boxes identical except in weight resting on a cotton wool platform. Infants reached prospectively for the lighter box, but only when their initial exploratory activities provided critical information. At 11 months, infants succeeded as long as they first determined that the platform was compressible; at 9 months, infants succeeded only if they also explored the boxes and thus had advance knowledge that they differed in weight.

Infants' perception of actions and situational constraints: an eye-tracking study.

Rational action understanding requires that infants evaluate the efficiency of a movement in achieving a goal with respect to situational constraints. In contrast, recent accounts have highlighted the impact of perceptual characteristics of the demonstrated movement or constraints to explain infants behavior in so-called rational imitation tasks. The current study employed eye tracking to investigate how 13- to 15-month-old infants distribute their visual attention to different aspects of an action demonstration. In three tasks (touchlight, house, and obstacle), infants watched videos in which a model performed an unusual action while she was or was not restricted by situational constraints. Infants overall looking to the demonstration as well as looking to four segments of the video (initial segment, constraint demonstration, action performance, and final segment) and to specific areas (constraint area of interest [AOI] and action AOI) was analyzed. Overall, infants looked longer at the demonstration in the constraint condition compared with the no-constraint condition. The condition differences occurred in the two video segments where the constraint or action was displayed and were especially profound for the constraint AOI. These findings indicate that infants processed the situational constraints. However, the pattern of condition differences varied slightly in the three tasks. In sum, the data imply that infants process perceptual characteristics of the movement or constraints and that low-level perceptual processes interact with higher level cognitive processes in infants action perception.