1999 — 2001 |
Mcdonough, Laraine |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
Powre: Utilizing New Technology to Investigate Cognitive Development
The purpose of this research is to examine how infants reason about moving objects. Until recently, very little was known about how infants initially make sense of the world. Most of the current research has either examined infants' ability to categorize static objects or else has examined their ability to detect different kinds of movement patterns. We still know very little about how infants understand the connections among objects and the different ways they move. For example, when infants see a bird running on the ground and then suddenly spreading its wings and taking flight, do they consider this one and the same kind of animal (i.e., a bird)? Or do they think that one kind of animal magically transformed itself into another? After all, a bird moving on the ground looks, and moves in ways, quite different from one that is flying. Alternatively, it is possible that infants may not consider the changes in the form of the bird (e.g., wings closed and then wings open), but instead attend only to its changes in movement patterns. Although this may seem intuitively odd, recent research by neuroscientists have shown that form and motion are processed using different areas of the brain, areas that may not be linked during early infancy. Thus, it is possible that infants may focus on the form of an object (but not its motion) or on the motion of an object (but not its form). However, if infants can attend to both the object form and its movement, the question arises as to how detailed their memory is of the object (e.g., birds have wings and a tail) and the motion patterns of each (gross movements such as wings flapping and/or subtle movements such as the tail arching and dipping). From these movement patterns, do infants then decide that all things with wings belong to one category whereas those without wings belong to another? Or do they initially engage in a more gross analysis of things that move in biological/animate ways versus those that move in mechanical/inanimate ways? These alternatives would lead to different expectations about how cognitive development progresses in early infancy.
This research will use films made using the newest technology in film editing and computer animation in order to test how infants perceive the form and movement of objects. The first studies will explore the parameters of animate and inanimate motion and how each such parameter is associated with various animate and inanimate objects. This will be done by "morphing" one object into the identity of another while holding motion parameters constant or by changing the motion parameters while holding the object identity constant. For example, infants will be shown films of moving objects in which an object is moving in either an expected manner (e.g., a bird running and flying) or an unexpected manner (e.g., a bird galloping like a horse). If infants understand the manner in which objects move (e.g., birds run and fly but do not gallop), then their looking preferences should reflect their understanding. Previous research leads to the prediction that infants will look longer at the atypical than at the typical motions, because that which is unexpected is naturally more interesting.
The principal investigator's academic career began later than most academics and was constrained to non-independent positions in Southern California for an extended time due to family obligations. This POWRE grant will enable her to refine techniques to explore new issues in the field of cognitive development in order to build an independent research program.
|
1 |
2001 — 2003 |
Hainline, Louise (co-PI) [⬀] Mcdonough, Laraine |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
The Use of Research Data to Teach Critical Thinking in the Classroom
Psychology - Cognitive (73) In order to teach students psychology, it is essential to provide them with opportunities to measure and analyze real samples of behavior. In this proof of concept project, we are exploring the use of new technology, namely DVD recordings, to bring behavior samples into developmental psychology courses in a more efficient and structured way than has typically been done in undergraduate psychology classes. Through contacts with researchers in child development, we are obtaining copies of videotaped experimental sessions, and transcribing them on DVDs for ease of use and presentation in the classroom. This project includes three components: (1) technical demonstration of editing, compressing, and transferring laboratory segments of developmental research sessions to DVD with a quality acceptable for use in the classroom; (2) obtaining subject and investigator releases in accordance with intellectual-property and privacy issues that will allow us to expand the project for full development; and (3) obtaining reliable data demonstrating effective educational use of this new format for delivering examples of behavior during standard classes. Although our work in this project is focused primarily on issues in developmental psychology, the considerations we address are general; they could deal equally well with many instructional topics. A critical aspect of this process is depicting a range of behaviors ranging from normal to a variety of abnormal developmental patterns. This is facilitating improved learning by students because they are more fully able to understand the range of behaviors that one sees in studying a particular aspect of development. Psychological research on learning and memory has shown that the greater the range of examples portrayed, the better able students/learners are at generalizing what they learn to new circumstances.
|
1 |