Learning in Informal and Formal Environments (LIFE) Center an NSF Science of Learning Center

Investigators: Philip Bell, Carrie Tzou, Leah Bricker, Maisy McGaughey, Suzanne Reeve, Heather Zimmerman
Institution: University of Washington

Researchers at the University of Washington have succeeded in empirically documenting how the same children learn science across a broad range of settings and pursuits. Through an intensive, longitidinal study of the same social groups, this NSF-funded research is beginning to illuminate fundamental in-situ learning processes associated with child development in the 21st century, familial learning practices associated with science domains, and the variable influence of children’s experiences across formal and informal learning settings. Results clearly indicate that there is wide variation in how families and children arrange and accomplish their learning (e.g., through intergenerational teaching, out-of-school schooling, extended parenting networks). Even within a given family, successful science learning is less associated with the repeated execution of particular learning processes and more associated with the arrangement of composite sequences of learning strategies that make best use of locally available resources (e.g., people, materials, technologies).

The broad influence of rituals in family life on children’s development is well established, but the actual learning arrangements associated with everyday life are still not well understood. This team ethnography is charting the learning of 123 people, including 99 children, from an urban, multicultural, multilingual community with significant levels of poverty. This unique data corpus has been constructed from over 1000 hours of in-situ videorecording, systematic observation, structured interviewing, and participant-documentation approaches. Professor Philip Bell and colleagues follow the children from their classrooms onto playgrounds and into museums. They go to after-school clubs with them, watch them play in their neighborhoods, then follow them home, sometimes with a translator, to study their hobbies and interests, their interactions with parents and siblings, to listen as they recount and interpret their day’s activities around the dinner table, and to observe as they set about the rituals of homework. Better understanding the diversity of in-situ learning arrangements will shed light on the reasons behind individual variation in learning outcomes as well as features of successful group cognition and learning.

After failing to find anything of its kind already in existence, LIFE Lead Philip Bell launched a blog that provides a stream of information on how people learn. The focus is on cognitive, sociocultural, developmental, and neurobiological research and related news. There will be quite a bit of attention paid to science, math, and technology learning in particular. The blog will announce advances made by LIFE researchers, researchers at the other NSF-Funded Science of Learning Centers, and learning scientists from a range of academic fields.

• To visit the blog, go to:
  http://how-we-learn.blogspot.com/
• To subscribe to the blog in a reader (e.g., Google Reader), use:
  http://feeds.feedburner.com/HowWeLearn

Conboy, B. & Kuhl, P. K. (2007). Early speech perception: Developing a culturally specific way of listening through social interaction. In S. Braten (Ed.), On being moved: From mirror neurons to empathy (pp. 175-199). Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.

Introduction: Throughout the first year of life, infants experience dramatic changes in speech sound perception that reflect a move from universal to specific ways of listening appropriate for their language community. In this chapter, we explore the role of social experience in this important transition in language development. Focusing on the phonetic aspects of language acquisition, we ask: what aspects of language experience serve as agents of change in helping infants to become perceptually attuned to other speakers of the language? We begin with a brief summary of the literature on the development of speech perception, which illustrates the importance of language experience during infancy for establishing native-like speech perception abilities (more extensive reviews of infant speech perception research are available from Goodman & Nusbaum 1994; Kuhl2004; Jusczyk 1997; Werker & Tees 2005). Next, we review studies in which we have applied the “Conditioned Head Turn” technique to investigate the role of language experience in influencing developmental patterns of speech perception. We then review the results of a recent study that suggest that when a new language is introduced towards the end of the first year, infants participate through social interaction in the process of phonetic learning, rather than learning solely through passive listening. Thus, the language experience required for effective phonetic learning has a highly social nature.

We suggest that particular social cues play an important role in heightening infants’ attention to relevant language stimuli in such early second language learning situations, and may also be essential for first language phonetic learning. Based on studies of social-cognitive development during the first year and its relationship to early language acquisition, we suggest that the process of attunement to social information and a sharing ofperception throughout the first year direct infants’ attention to various types of relevant language stimuli. We close by discussing some working hypotheses being tested in our ongoing research.

Zimmerman, F. J., Christakis, D. A., & Meltzoff, A. N. (2007). Associations between media viewing and language development in children under 2 years. Journal of Pediatrics, 151, 364-368.

Abstract: Objective To test the association of media exposure with language development in children under age 2 years.

Study design A total of 1008 parents of children age 2 to 24 months, identified by birth certificates, were surveyed by telephone in February 2006. Questions were asked about child and parent demographics, child-parent interactions, and child’s viewing of several content types of television and DVDs/videos. Parents were also asked to complete the short form of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (CDI). The associations between normed CDI scores and media exposure were evaluated using multivariate regression, controlling for parent and child demographics and parent-child interactions.

Results Among infants (age 8 to 16 months), each hour per day of viewing baby DVDs/videos was associated with a 16.99-point decrement in CDI score in a fully adjusted model (95% confidence interval 26.20 to 7.77). Among toddlers (age 17 to 24 months), there were no significant associations between any type of media exposure and CDI scores. Amount of parental viewing with the child was not significantly associated with CDI scores in either infants or toddlers.

Conclusions Further research is required to determine the reasons for an association between early viewing of baby DVDs/videos and poor language development. (J Pediatr 2007;151:364-8)

Wang, Y., Lin, J.-F., Kuhl, P. K., Hirsch, J. (2007). Mathematical and linguistic processing differs between native and second languages: An fMRI study. Brain Imaging and Behavior, 1, 68-82.

Abstract: This study investigates the neuro-mechanisms underlying mathematical processing in native (L1) and nonnative (L2) languages. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), Mandarin Chinese learners of English were imaged while performing calculations, parity judgments and linguistic tasks in their L1 (Chinese) and L2 (English). Results show that compared to L1, (1) calculation in L2 involves additional neural activation, especially in the left hemisphere, including the inferior frontal gyrus (Broca’s area); (2) parity judgment engages similar regions for both languages, and (3) phonetic discrimination in L2 does not involve the perisylvian language (Broca’s and Wernicke’s) areas. These findings indicate that, calculation in L2, but not parity, can be processed through the L1 system, suggesting that the interaction between language and mathematics involves a specific neurocircuitry when associated with L2.

Silva-Pereyra, J., Conboy, B. T., Klarman, L., & Kuhl, P. K. (2007). Grammatical processing without semantics? An event-related brain potential study of preschoolers using jabberwocky sentences. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 19, 1-16.

Rivera-Gaxiola, M., Silva-Pereyra, J., pecial, L., Garcia-Sierra, A., Lara-Ayala, L., Cadena-Salazar, C. & Kuhl, P. K. (2007). Principal component analyses and scalp distribution of the auditory P150-250 and N250-550 to speech contrasts in Mexican and American infants. Developmental Neuropsychology, 31, 363-378.

Liu, H. M., Tsao, F. M., & Kuhl, P. K. (2007). Acoustic analysis of lexical tone in Mandarin infant-directed speech. Developmental Psychology, 43, 912-917.

Kuhl, P. K. (2007). Is speech learning “gated” by the social brain? Developmental Science, 10, 110-120.

Abstract: I advance the hypothesis that the earliest phases of language acquisition, the developmental transition from an initial universal state of language processing to one that is language-specific, requires social interaction. Relating human language learning to a broader set of neurobiological cases of communicative development, I argue that the social brain “gates” the computational mechanisms involved in human language learning.

Yawei, C., Meltzoff, A. N., Decety, J. (2007). Motivation modulates the activity of the human mirror-neuron system. Cerebral Cortex, 17, 1979-1986.

Abstract: It is not known whether the mirror-neuron system is modulated by motivation, such as hunger. In this study, 2 groups of healthy participants underwent 2 functional magnetic resonance imaging scanning sessions separated by 1.5 h interval. During each session, participants were presented with video clips of another person grasping objects or grasping food. The first session was conducted after participants from group 1 had fasted. Then these participants were allowed to eat and were scanned again. Participants from group 2 had a meal before the first session. Food-related stimuli elicited specific hemodynamic response in the parahippocampal gyrus, orbitofrontal cortex, and amygdala, when participants were in a hungry state as compared with a satiated state. In addition, regions that belong to the mirror-neuron system, including the inferior frontal gyrus, and the posterior parietal cortex showed greater response when participants were hungry. Increased activity was also detected in the extrastriate body area. A positive correlation was observed between the self-report ratings of hunger and the hemodynamic activity in the inferior frontal gyrus as well as in the amygdala. Our results suggest that motivation to eat modulates the neural activity in the mirror-neuron system, facilitating the preparation or the intention to act.