Learning of hierarchical serial patterns emerges in infancy

Abstract

Recursive, hierarchically organized serial patterns provide the underlying structure in many cognitive and motor domains including speech, language, music, social interaction, and motor action. We investigated whether learning of hierarchical patterns emerges in infancy by habituating 204 infants to different hierarchical serial patterns and then testing for discrimination and generalization of such patterns. Results indicated that 8- to 10-month-old and 12- to 14-month-old infants exhibited sensitivity to the difference between hierarchical and non-hierarchical structure but that 4- to 6-month-old infants did not. These findings demonstrate that the ability to perceive, learn, and generalize recursive, hierarchical, pattern rules emerges in infancy and add to growing evidence that general-purpose pattern learning mechanisms emerge during the first year of life.

Adaptive rule learning of event sequences during the A‐not‐B task in 9‐month‐old infants

“…We examined this question using a modified version of an A‐not‐B task, in which a change in the hiding event sequence was paired with a change in the experimenter hiding the toy. We tested 9‐month‐old infants, an age‐group who are both capable of organizing simple audiovisual inputs into predictable rule structures (Werchan et al., 2015; Werchan et al, 2016; Lewkowicz et al., 2018) and who consistently show the A‐not‐B error (Diamond, 2002). We found that infants’ search behavior was consistent with using the identity of the experimenter to organize events into S‐A‐O rules that guide subsequent action (see Table 4 for a summary of manipulations and findings).…”

“…In other words, higher‐order contexts can be used to cue lower‐order rules (S‐A‐O associations) that are most appropriate for a given context, thereby reducing complexity of learning problems. Prior research reveals that infants as young as 8 months of age can organize audiovisual inputs into predictable rules or sequences of this sort during incidental learning, even in environments where there is no immediate or obvious benefit to doing so (Lewkowicz, Schmuckler, & Mangalindan, 2018; Werchan, Collins, Frank, & Amso, 2015; Werchan & Amso, 2020). Other data show that infants can use social information, in the form of face‐voice contexts, to organize different sets of spoken labels for the same objects (Werchan et al., 2015; Werchan et al, 2016).…”

“…audiovisual inputs into predictable rules or sequences of this sort during incidental learning, even in environments where there is no immediate or obvious benefit to doing so (Lewkowicz, Schmuckler, & Mangalindan, 2018;Werchan, Collins, Frank, & Amso, 2015;Werchan & Amso, 2020). Other data show that infants can use social information, in the form of face-voice contexts, to organize different sets of spoken labels for the same objects (Werchan et al, 2015;Werchan et al, 2016).…”

“…Notably, our goal is not to arbitrate among theories of the A-not-B error, as our predictions are consistent with multiple theoretical approaches (Diamond, 2001; F I G U R E 1 Infants may attempt to use the identities of the experimenters to organize event sequences into predictable rules (S-A-O contingencies), which are then used to guide search behavior Marcovitch & Zelazo, 1999;Munakata, 1998;Smith, Thelen, Titzer, & McLin, 1999;Topal et al, 2008), but rather to use the event structure of this task to inform the value of experimenter identities as cues for parsing events into predictable S-A-O rules that guide action. We tested 9-month-old infants, an age-group capable of organizing simple audiovisual inputs into predictable rules (Werchan et al, 2015;Werchan et al, 2016;Lewkowicz et al, 2018), and who consistently show perseverative errors in standard versions of the A-not-B task (Diamond, 2002). In Experiments 1 and 2, we examined whether infants can use the identity of the experimenter hiding the toy to organize events into predictable S-A-O rules that guide action (Figures 2 and 5).…”

Chunking

“…Other recent evidence indicates that chunking may also occur as a perceptual process (Gilbert et al 2014(Gilbert et al , 2015. Recent developmental research has demonstrated chunking abilities in human infants (Lewkowicz et al 2018).…”