{"pk":27355,"title":"The roles of item repetition and position in infant sequence learning","subtitle":null,"abstract":"We examined mechanisms underlying infants’ ability to\ndetect, extract, and generalize sequential patterns, focusing on\nhow saliency and consistency of distributional information\nguide infant learning of the most “likely” pattern in\naudiovisual sequences. In Experiment 1, we asked if 11- and\n14-month-old infants could learn a “repetition anywhere” rule\n(e.g., ABBC, AABC, ABCC). In Experiment 2 we asked if\n11- and 14-month-olds could generalize a “medial repetition”\nrule when its position is consistent in sequence, and in\nExperiment 3 we asked if 11-month-olds could identify a\nnonadjacent dependency occurring at edge positions. Infants\nwere first habituated to 4-item sequences (shapes + syllables)\ncontaining repetition- and/or position-based structure, and\nwere then tested with “familiar” structure instantiated across\nnew items or combinations of items vs. “novel” (random)\nsequences. We found that 11-month-olds failed to learn the\nrepetition rule both when the structure appeared in initial,\nmedial, or final position (Experiment 1) and when it was\nrestricted to the medial position (Experiment 2). Fourteen-\nmonth-olds learned repetition rules under both conditions.\nFinally, in Experiment 3 11-month-olds succeeded in learning\na nonadjacent dependency in sequences identical to those\nused to test repetition learning in Experiment 2. Our results\nsuggest that infants at 11 months, like adults, are relatively\ninsensitive to patterns in the middle of sequences.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[{"word":"infant learning; rule learning; sequence learning"}],"section":"Posters: Papers","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/55v1v7jd","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Christina","middle_name":"","last_name":"Schonberg","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of California, Los Angeles","department":""},{"first_name":"Gary","middle_name":"F.","last_name":"Marcus","name_suffix":"","institution":"New York University","department":""},{"first_name":"Scott","middle_name":"P.","last_name":"Johnson","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of California, Los Angeles","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"2017-01-01T18:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/27355/galley/16991/download/"}]}