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

Researchers: Andrew N. Meltzoff

The Washington State Legislature, with representatives from the Governor’s Office, requested that Meltzoff give a briefing on the science of early learning.

The briefing, called “The Early Learning Ecosystem” involved discussions of how to unite the scientific findings on early learning with the state’s activities and programs, present and future designs, concerning a seamless connection between 0-5, K-12, and higher education.

Kuhl, P. K. (January, 2008). Cracking the speech code: Language and the infant brain. CNBC Lecture Series, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA.

Researchers: Andrew N. Meltzoff, Patricia Kuhl

Patricia Kuhl and Andrew Meltzoff delivered lectures in a symposium at the University Child Development School (Seattle, WA) on the relationship between “Creativity and Intellect”. The symposium involved scientists translating information from the scientific domain to those who could use it in everyday practice.

Kuhl and Meltzoff presented a set of lectures to 100 faculty, administrators and parents, and engaged in a smaller work session involving discussions about school design and practice to put into action the scientific insights.

Researchers: Andrew N. Meltzoff, Patricia Kuhl

Research on the developing mind was the topic for a workshop conducted by Erica Stevens, in collaboration with Patricia Kuhl and Andrew Meltzoff, for Healthy Start. Healthy Start is a home-visiting program devoted to educating and supporting very young parents (22 and younger) who are learning to parent their first child. The program was inspired in 1994 by emerging research on the developing brain and motivated by the hope that mentoring these parents in the nurture and stimulation of their young children could result in a brighter, healthier, less troubled future generation. Family Support Specialists from the program discussed with scientists the potential application of research to families in the program.

Researcher: Andrew N. Meltzoff

Dr. Andrew N. Meltzoff gave a workshop on the science of early learning to the 25 Board members of the Foundation for Early Learning (FEL) and others. FEL is a no-profit organization focused on helping families, especially diverse and under-privileged families, get their children ready for school. Meltzoff discussed the science of learning and how research on executive function, cognitive development, bilingualism, imitation, and the formation of stereotypes is relevant to parents, policymakers, and foundations interested in helping children enter formal schooling maximally prepared to succeed. The workshop was conducted to help FEL make better choices in the design of their early learning programs.

Meltzoff, A. N., & Williamson, R. A. (2008). Imitation and modeling. In M. M. Haith & J. B. Benson (Eds.), Encyclopedia of infant and early childhood development (Vol. 2, pp. 127-136). San Diego: Academic Press.

Conboy, B. T., Rivera-Gaxiola, M., Silva-Pereyra, J., & Kuhl, P. K. (2008). Event-related potential studies of early language processing at the phoneme, word, and sentence levels. Trends in Language Acquisition Research, 5, 23-64.

Abstract: The use of event-related potentials (ERPs) in studies of language processing in infants and children is increasing in popularity. The high temporal resolution of ERPs makes them ideally suited for studying the fine-grained, temporally ordered structure of spoken language, and ERP experiments can be completed without overt participation from subjects, thereby reducing the cognitive demands inherent in behavioral paradigms. Thus the use of ERPs in child language research will most likely continue to grow over the next several years, and findings from such studies will become increasingly important for building theories of early language development. In this chapter we discuss three ways in which ERPs have been applied to the study of child language development. In the first section we review behavioral studies of cross-linguistic phoneme processing during the first year of life, and how ERP studies of infants have elucidated the effects of language experience on speech perception beyond what was known from the behavioral studies. We discuss the similarities and differences between results obtained from ERP and behavioral experiments using the same stimuli. In the second section we review ERP studies of word processing in toddlers, and what these show about the effects of differential language experience on word learning. In the third section we review ERP studies of sentence processing in 2-, 3- and 4-year-old children, which have revealed both similarities to and differences from ERP studies ofsentence processing in adults.

Brooks, R., & Meltzoff, A. N. (2008). Infant gaze following and pointing predict accelerated vocabulary growth through two years of age: A longitudinal, growth curve modeling study. Journal of Child Language, 35, 207-220.

Abstract: We found that infant gaze following and pointing predicts subsequent language development. At ages 0; 10 or 0 ; 11, infants saw an adult turn to look at an object in an experimental setting. Productive vocabulary was assessed longitudinally through two years of age. Growth curve modeling showed that infants who gaze followed and looked longer at the target object had significantly faster vocabulary growth than infants with shorter looks, even with maternal education controlled ; adding infant pointing strengthened the model. We highlight the role of social cognition in word learning and emphasize the communicative-referential functions of early gaze following and pointing.

Demiris, Y., & Meltzoff, A. N. (2008). The robot in the crib: A developmental analysis of imitation skills in infants and robots. Infant and Child Development, 17, 43-53.

Interesting systems, whether biological or artificial, develop. Starting from some initial conditions, they respond to environmental changes, and continuously improve their capabilities. Developmental psychologists have dedicated significant effort to studying the developmental progression of infant imitation skills, because imitation underlies the infant’s ability to under- stand and learn from his or her social environment. In a converging intellectual endeavour, roboticists have been equip- ping robots with the ability to observe and imitate human actions because such abilities can lead to rapid teaching of robots to perform tasks. We provide here a comparative analysis between studies of infants imitating and learning from human demonstrators, and computational experiments aimed at equipping a robot with such abilities. We will compare the research across the following two dimensions: (a) initial conditions}what is innate in infants, and what functionality is initially given to robots, and (b) developmental mechanisms}how does the performance of infants improve over time, and what mechanisms are given to robots to achieve equivalent behaviour. Both developmental science and robotics are critically concerned with: (a) how their systems can and do go ‘beyond the stimulus’ given during the demonstration, and (b) how the internal models used in this process are acquired during the lifetime of the system.