Tag: Caitlin Fausey

Does Seeing Something Old Help Infants Pay Attention to Something New in Object Sequences?

Presenter(s): Allison Zhou − Biology

Faculty Mentor(s): Caitlin Fausey

Oral Session 2SW

Research Area: Developmental Psychology

Funding: UO VPRI, UO WGS

Infants’ first words include the names of objects that appear frequently in their lives. Could these frequent objects also help them learn the names of less common objects? We know from prior research that what people see and hear is largely structured so that there are a small number of ubiquitous items and a large number that are much less prevalent. In the present study, we test the hypothesis that the shape of a frequency distribution matters for how infants pay attention to its instances. In ongoing work, infants (16-30 months old) view pictures of novel objects that vary in both color and size. Infants sample the pictures one-at-a-time from either (a) a uniform distribution, where infants see each unique object an equal number of times, or (b) a non-uniform distribution, where infants see one of the objects six times more often than the others. Specifically, we measure how many object pictures the infant chooses to observe before they stop engaging in our task. Data collection is ongoing. We predict infants to pay significantly more attention to sequences of objects sampled from a non- uniform distribution. The non-uniform distribution has higher rates of repetition and may encourage the learner to compare newly seen objects to the familiar anchor. Learning about objects and their names requires encountering them. Our research will yield new insight into how object distributions potentiate the ways infants attend to their world.

Caregiver singing and infant vocalizations in everyday infancy

Presenter(s): Madison Edgar

Faculty Mentor(s): Caitlin Fausey

Poster 106

Session: Social Sciences & Humanities

The auditory environments infants encounter impact their vocal development, especially during interactions between a caregiver and their infant (e.g., Franklin et al., 2014; Cartmill et al., 2013). We know that caregivers not only talk but also sing to their infants; however, we don’t yet know how singing might matter for many infant behaviors in everyday life (Custodero, Britto, & Brooks-Gunn, 2003). In this study, I ask: Does singing impact infant vocalizations in everyday life? We audio recorded one full day at home from 35 infants (ages 6-12 months old). Trained coders identified moments of live vocal music by listening to these recordings. Speech modeling software automatically identified infant vocalizations (Ford et al., 2008). Overall, infants encountered 6.5 minutes of live vocal music each day (Median = 6.52 , SD = 7.24) and vocalized 1165 times over the course of each day (Median = 1165, SD = 523.55). Interestingly, infants who encountered more live vocal music also vocalized more (r = .48, p < .01). These results raise the possibility that caregiver singing promotes vocalization practice for infants. We know that high quality auditory environments include lots of speech directed specifically at the child, which suggests that singing may also be high quality input. Thus, this study provides implications for future interventions for infants with lower quality auditory environments.