Biomedical subjects

Lisa M Oakes

Publications and source records attributed to Lisa M Oakes.

7 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

Infants flexibly use different dimensions to categorize objects.

A sequential-touching task was used to investigate whether 14-month-old infants can rapidly change how they categorize a set of objects, recognizing new groupings of objects they had previously categorized in a different way. When presented with a collection of objects that could be categorized by shape (balls vs. blocks) or material (soft vs. hard), infants who showed stable performance on a superordinate-level categorization task or who had larger receptive vocabularies exhibited flexible categorization; they categorized the objects by material as well as by shape. Infants who rarely responded to the superordinate-level categorization task or who had smaller receptive vocabularies, in contrast, categorized primarily by shape. Thus, flexible categorization is related to development in other cognitive domains.

Association Learning↗

PubMed2006

Rapid development of feature binding in visual short-term memory.

The binding of object identity (color) and location in visual short-term memory (VSTM) was examined in 6.5- to 12.5-month-old infants (N= 144). Although we previously found that by age 6.5 months, infants can represent both color and location in VSTM, in the present study we observed that 6.5-month-old infants could not remember trivially simple color-location combinations across a 300-ms delay. However, 7.5-month-old infants could bind color and location as effectively as 12.5-month-old infants. Control conditions confirmed that the failure of 6.5-month-old infants was not a result of perceptual or attentional limitations. This rapid development of VSTM binding between 6.5 and 7.5 months occurs during a period of rapid increase in VSTM storage capacity and just after a period of dramatic neuroanatomical changes in parietal cortex. Thus, the ability to bind features and the ability to store multiple objects may both depend on a process that is mediated by posterior parietal cortex and is perhaps related to focused attention.

Attention↗

PubMed2004

Infants can rapidly form new categorical representations.

Young infants learn common categorical distinctions, such as animals versus vehicles. But can they, like adults, rapidly form new categories, such as black-and-white animals? To answer this question, 6-, 10-, and 13-month-old infants were familiarized with four land animals that were black and white in coloring (e.g., a zebra and a black-and-white tiger) and then were tested with novel animals and a truck. The infants responded to an exclusive category that apparently included only black-and-white animals, suggesting that they formed a new categorical representation during familiarization. A comparison group of infants familiarized with a set of land animals that were more variable in coloring (e.g., a pale yellow horse and a yellow-and-brown tiger) formed a very general categorical representation that included many different kinds of animals, regardless of coloring. Therefore, like adults, infants rapidly form new categorical representations in response to the context.

Child Development↗

PubMedDate not supplied

The development of visual short-term memory capacity in infants.

Four experiments assessed visual short-term memory capacity in 4- to 13-month-old infants by comparing their looking to changing and nonchanging stimulus streams presented side by side. In each stream, 1 to 6 colored squares repeatedly appeared and disappeared. In changing streams, the color of a different randomly chosen square changed each time the display reappeared; the colors remained the same in nonchanging streams. Infants should look longer at changing streams, but only if they can remember the colors of the squares. The youngest infants preferred changing streams only when the displays contained one object, whereas older infants preferred changing streams when the displays contained up to 4 objects. Thus, visual short-term memory capacity increases significantly across the first year of life.

Attention↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Developmental changes in endogenous control of attention: the role of target familiarity on infants' distraction latency.

This study evaluated the interactive effects of endogenous and exogenous influences on infants' attention allocation by assessing the role of target familiarity on distraction latency during object exploration. In Experiment 1 (N = 54), infants' distraction latencies as they investigated both familiar toys (ones they previously had seen in a familiarization procedure) and novel toys (ones they had not seen in the familiarization procedure) were assessed longitudinally at 6.5 and 9 months of age. In Experiment 2 (N = 32), infants' distraction latencies were assessed at either 6.5 or 10 months as they investigated either familiar or novel targets. In both experiments, older infants, but not younger infants, exhibited longer latencies as they investigated novel toys as compared with their latencies as they investigated familiar toys. These results are discussed in terms of developmental changes in the interactive effects of endogenous and exogenous factors controlling attention allocation.

Attention↗

PubMedDate not supplied

What does it look like and what can it do? Category structure influences how infants categorize.

Despite a large body of research demonstrating the kinds of categories to which infants respond, few studies have directly assessed how infants' categorization unfolds over time. Four experiments used a visual familiarization task to evaluate 10-month-old infants' (N = 98) learning of exemplars characterized by commonalities in appearance or function. When learning exemplars with a common function, infants initially responded to the common feature, apparently forming a category, and only learned the individual features with more extensive familiarization. When learning exemplars with a common appearance, infants initially learned the individual features and apparently only formed a category with more extensive familiarization. The results are discussed in terms of models of category learning.

Association Learning↗

PubMedDate not supplied

It clicks when it is rolled and it squeaks when it is squeezed: what 10-month-old infants learn about object function.

Function has been considered important in numerous literatures in the study of cognitive development, yet little is known about what and how infants learn about function. Five experiments examined what 10-month-old infants (N=80) learn about functions that involve a sound produced when an object is acted on. Infants habituated to a single object (Experiment 1) or multiple objects that performed the same function (Experiment 2) learned both the actions and the sounds. Infants did not appear to learn relations between actions and sounds (Experiment 3) or appearances and sounds (Experiment 4), although they did learn the relations between appearances and actions (Experiment 5). These results are discussed in terms of how infants learn about object function.

Attitude↗