Early operant learning is unaffected by socio-economic status and other demographic factors: A meta-analysis

Gerhardstein, Peter; Dickerson, Kelly; Miller, Stacie S.; Hipp, Daniel

doi:10.1016/j.infbeh.2012.02.005

Cited by 13 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…This study used contingency learning as a vehicle to examine individual differences in young infants' vagal tone in relation to learning status. The behavioral response of Day 1 and Day 2 Learners was consistent with previous reports (Crossman et al, 2009) and was unaffected by social demographic variables, consistent with a recent meta-analysis (Gerhardstein, Dickerson, Miller, & Hipp, 2012). Given this learning difference, we asked two questions: (1) Is lower baseline vagal tone related to learner status and/or to maternal reports of infant temperament; and (2) when infants don't respond to a contingency within a single session, do their vagal tone levels during the session differ from those who do?…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 90%

Vagal tone during infant contingency learning and its disruption

Sullivan

2015

Developmental Psychobiology

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This study used contingency learning to examine changes in infants’ vagal tone during learning and its disruption. The heart rate of 160 five-month-old infants was recorded continuously during the first of two training sessions as they experienced an audiovisual event contingent on their pulling. Maternal reports of infant temperament were also collected. Baseline vagal tone, a measure of parasympathetic regulation of the heart, was related to vagal levels during the infants’ contingency learning session, but not to their learner status. Vagal tone levels did not vary significantly over session minutes. Instead, vagal tone levels were a function of both individual differences in learner status and infant soothability. Vagal levels of infants who learned in the initial session were similar regardless of their soothability; however, vagal levels of infants who learned in a subsequent session differed as a function of soothability. Additionally, vagal levels during contingency disruption were significantly higher among infants in this group who were more soothable as opposed to those who were less soothable. The results suggest that contingency learning and disruption is associated with stable vagal tone in the majority of infants, but that individual differences in attention processes and state associated with vagal tone may be most readily observed during the disruption phase.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 90%

Vagal tone during infant contingency learning and its disruption

Sullivan

2015

Developmental Psychobiology

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“…While SES is linked to memory skill by the start of school (Noble et al, 2007) and indeed, socioeconomic disparities in memory skill extend across the lifespan (Stern, Albert, Tang, & Tsai, 1999), findings have been inconsistent concerning disparities in memory development earlier in childhood. Historically, relations between SES and infant novelty preference were inconsistent (Fagan & Singer, 1983; O’Connor, Cohen, & Parmelee, 1984; Rose & Wallace, 1985), and a recent meta-analysis reported no evidence of SES differences in infant operant conditioning (Gerhardstein, Dickerson, Miller, & Hipp, 2012). Thus, although hippocampally mediated declarative memory skill emerges over the first 2 years of life (Barr et al, 1996; Barr, Walker, Gross, & Hayne, 2013), the extent to which individual differences in memory development can be explained by SES at these early ages requires further investigation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Socioeconomic disparities in neurocognitive development in the first two years of life

Noble

Engelhardt

Brito

et al. 2015

Developmental Psychobiology

165

112

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Socioeconomic status (SES) is strongly associated with cognition and achievement. Socioeconomic disparities in language and memory skills have been reported from elementary school through adolescence. Less is known about the extent to which such disparities emerge in infancy. Here, 179 infants from socioeconomically diverse families were recruited. Using a cohort-sequential design, 90 infants were followed at 9 and 15 months, and 89 were followed at 15 and 21 months. SES disparities in developmental trajectories of language and memory were present such that, at 21 months of age, children of highly educated parents scored approximately .8 standard deviations higher in both language and memory than children of less educated parents. The home language and literacy environment and parental warmth partially accounted for disparities in language, but not memory development.

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“…Recent technological developments enabling more sensitive measurements have led to a renewed interest in individual differences in the learning and retention abilities of infants in the mobile paradigm. Given that previous reports have indicated that not all infants can learn the contingency in the mobile paradigm (Gerhardstein et al, 2012;Jacquey et al, 2020a), investigating behavioral differences between learners and non-learners has gained importance. In a study in which the mobile was activated only if the target leg exceeded a virtual threshold, infants who were able to learn the task exhibited different movement kinematics (e.g., less in-phase hip-knee coordination) compared to non-learners during the acquisition phase (Sargent et al, 2015).…”

Section: Recent Yearsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Making the World Behave: A New Embodied Account on Mobile Paradigm

Sen

Gredebäck

2021

Front. Syst. Neurosci.

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In this review article, we describe the mobile paradigm, a method used for more than 50 years to assess how infants learn and remember sensorimotor contingencies. The literature on the mobile paradigm demonstrates that infants below 6 months of age can remember the learning environment weeks after when reminded periodically and integrate temporally distributed information across modalities. The latter ability is only possible if events occur within a temporal window of a few days, and the width of this required window changes as a function of age. A major critique of these conclusions is that the majority of this literature has neglected the embodied experience, such that motor behavior was considered an equivalent developmental substitute for verbal behavior. Over recent years, simulation and empirical work have highlighted the sensorimotor aspect and opened up a discussion for possible learning mechanisms and variability in motor preferences of young infants. In line with this recent direction, we present a new embodied account on the mobile paradigm which argues that learning sensorimotor contingencies is a core feature of development forming the basis for active exploration of the world and body. In addition to better explaining recent findings, this new framework aims to replace the dis-embodied approach to the mobile paradigm with a new understanding that focuses on variance and representations grounded in sensorimotor experience. Finally, we discuss a potential role for the dorsal stream which might be responsible for guiding action according to visual information, while infants learn sensorimotor contingencies in the mobile paradigm.

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Early operant learning is unaffected by socio-economic status and other demographic factors: A meta-analysis

Cited by 13 publications

References 27 publications

Vagal tone during infant contingency learning and its disruption

Vagal tone during infant contingency learning and its disruption

Socioeconomic disparities in neurocognitive development in the first two years of life

Making the World Behave: A New Embodied Account on Mobile Paradigm

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