Andrew N. Meltzoff - US grants

DESCRIPTION: (Adapted from investigator's abstract) There is near universal acceptance of the view that imitative processes play an important role in the early cognitive, social and personality development of the child. The role of imitation in linguistic development is also critical. Vocal imitation is the principal vehicle for infants' learning of their "mother tongue" -- the phonetic inventory and the prosodic structure of their native language. Experiments in the investigators' laboratories suggest that infants' abilities to imitate have been underestimated by traditional developmental theories. Infants can imitate facial gestures at birth, a skill that was postulated to appear first at about one year of age. Recent findings with older infants demonstrate imitation among infant peers, infant imitation from television, and the deferred imitation over delays as long as one week. New findings on vocal imitation indicate vowel imitation in 18-week-olds and suggest that the capacity for vocal imitation may exist as early as 12 weeks of age. Moreover, experiments with nonspeech sounds show that this early ability is quite selective; infants imitate speech sounds but fail to vocalize to nonspeech sounds that mimic certain properties of human speech. Studies are proposed investigating two different kinds of imitative acts, gestural and vocal, during the first two years of life. Although each of the domains has specific concerns guiding the design of the experiments, of interest are the issues that are common to both. Examples of these common concerns are: the origins and basis of infants' imitative abilities; the nature of the stimulus most effective in eliciting imitation; the effects of experience and development on imitation; and the functional significance and social utility of this behavior. The proposed research brings together expertise from two separate disciplines, developmental psychology and speech and hearing sciences.

The goal of this project is to increase our understanding of brain function and development in autism. Hypotheses regarding the neurobiological basis of autism will be tested by exaining whether individual differences in early symptom expression in autism are related to performance on neuropsychological tasks that are known to be mediated by different brain regions, and to patterns of functional brain imaging. The longitudinal stability of neuropsychological profile in children with autism from early preschool to elementary school age will mental retardation and typical development will participate in these studies, which address the following aims: Aim 1 is to identify specific neuropsychological impairments in young children with autism. Tasks known to be mediated by the dorsolateral prefontal, parietal, medial temporal, or cerebellar brain regions will be administered to young children with autism and matched comparison children, and relations between neuropsychological performance and severity of autistic symptoms will be examined. Aim 2 is to utilize high-density ERP brain imaging to study the morphology and spatial localization of brain electrical activity during the recognition of familiar faces and the discrimination of emotional expressions. Studies have linked face recognition and emotion perception to the medial temporal lobe. This project will examine the presence and universality of these impairments in autism, as well as their neural correlates. Aim 3 is to examine the stability of neuropsychological profile in children with autism and mental retardation from early preschool to elementary school age. Children will be followed longitudinally and be administered a comprehensive neuropsychological battery at 6-7 years of age. Aim 4 is to investigate early-emerging behavioral impairments in autism. Studies have been designed to shed light on impairments in orienting to social stimuli, motor imitation, joint attention, responses to emotional stimuli, symbolic play, and precursors to a "theory of mind." The results of these studies will address specific hypotheses regarding the nature of these early behaviornal impairments and allow for systematic investigation of the relation between autistic symptoms and brain function.

DESCRIPTION: Three lines of research on infant imitation are proposed. In the first, deferred imitation is used to probe infants' memory for novel actions performed by an adult model. Experiments ask, for example, how early can infants engage in deferred imitation of novel acts, over what delays can infants remember novel acts, and how is information about novel acts forgotten over the course of a week. In the second line of research, behavioral reenactment (a new paradigm which involves infants' imitation of an action a model attempted but failed to complete) is used to explore infants' understanding of the goals that underlie others' actions. Experiments test, for example, how early can infants engage in behavioral reenactment, what additional evidence is there that infants view failed attempts as goal-directed, and under what conditions do infants view ambiguous acts as goal-directed failed attempts. The third line of research focuses on facial imitation, and explores what changes occur with age in infants' imitation of facial gestures.

LIFE abstract

The purpose of the Learning in Informal and Formal Environments (LIFE) Center it to understand and advance human learning through a simultaneous focus on implicit, informal, and formal learning, thereby cultivating generalizable interdisciplinary theories that guide the design of effective new learning technologies and environments. The investigators argue that, given the complexity of learning phenomena and the disparate levels of analysis that can be used to study learning, a transformed science of learning will not come about by proceeding with "research as usual." Their plan is to bring experts together from research traditions that have tended to work separately rather than collaboratively. The expertise in the Center spans neurobiological, psychological, and social/cultural approaches as well as pioneering work in augmenting human learning through innovative technology and new media tools. The investigators hope to encourage productive conceptual collisions by deliberately juxtaposing the different traditions' prevailing assumptions, theories, and methodologies. These collisions are designed to spark efforts toward creating a coherent, integrated perspective that is theoretically sound and has clear and far-reaching implications for improving people's abilities to learn.

A central premise of the LIFE Center is that successful efforts to understand and propel learning require a simultaneous emphasis on informal and formal (e.g., K-16) learning environments, and on the implicit ways in which people learn. The basic research will be conducted through three intersecting and multidisciplinary strands of inquiry. The first strand, Implicit Learning and the Brain, will document learning in the brain over the lifespan and discover from empirical and modeling work the underlying neural processes and principles associated with implicit forms of learning in the domains of cognitive, linguistic, and social learning. The second strand, Informal Learning, will conduct studies of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math learning in informal settings to develop comprehensive and coordinated accounts of the cognitive, social, affective, and cultural dimensions that propel learning and development outside of school. The third strand, Designs for Formal Learning and Beyond, will conduct experimental studies of theory-based principles for the design of high-quality learning environments. A major focus of the cognitive component of the strand will involve theories and measures of transfer -- the ability to enter an unanticipated setting with the skills, knowledge, and dispositions to make sense of the structure of a problem, to locate and use relevant resources, and to reflect on one's efforts so as to learn to "work smarter." The investigators also propose to initiate a line of technology projects that would proceed in concert with the theoretical work on transfer. This strand will place special emphasis on studying powerful roles for new technologies.

Proposal NSF 0835854: The LIFE Center
ABSTRACT

This is a proposal to renew the LIFE Center, situated at the University of Washington in Seattle, a multi-university, multi-year, interdisciplinary project devoted to the study of social factors in learning, an underappreciated element of the science of learning. Now concluding its 5th year of support, the center proposes to continue its efforts "to develop and test principles about the social foundations of human learning in informal and formal environments, including how people learn to innovate in contemporary society, with the goal of enhancing human learning from infancy to adulthood."

Among the research projects to be pursued during the next phase of investigation are (1) social factors in language learning--especially in infants, (2) new designs to enhance learning via media and technology by identifying and utilizing social interaction and "social belief", the perception that one is interacting with a human being, whether or not this is true, (3) effects on learning of social identity and stereotyping, (4) social practices in science learning, including an anthropological study of informal science learning in social settings, (5) new views of and efforts to enhance expertise, transfer and assessment, (6) social practices in the workplace that foster learning, and (7) the importance of informal teaching by parents, peers and mentors.

In addition to demonstrating strong effects of social factors on learning, the researchers in LIFE will pursue answers to the overall theoretical question: "What is it about the social that powerfully enhances learning?"

More than just a research center, LIFE participants are also committed to the education of undergraduates, graduate students and post-docs; to increasing diversity among faculty, students and future scientists; and to the transfer of research results to practice in education and workplaces.

Nearly 60 years post the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education (1954), inequality still plagues the nation's education system. While explicit barriers to educational equity (e.g., laws) have been put in place, implicit attitudes and beliefs that foster educational disparities remain. For example, the cultural belief that Black Americans are less intelligent than their White American counterparts still persists, and has implications for children's self-concepts, development, and academic outcomes. The existing research on stereotyping and identity processes focuses primarily on adolescents and adults, and chiefly on the ways that individuals adhere or accommodate to these stereotypes. Yet, recent empirical research suggests that the influence of cultural stereotypes may start earlier than middle-school. The dual objectives of this postdoctoral project are to understand (a) the origins and early development of racial identity in childhood and (b) the ways that youth challenge or resist prevailing cultural stereotypes. These objectives are achieved through interdisciplinary work conducted by Drs. Andrew Meltzoff (Sponsoring Scientist) and Leoandra Onnie Rogers (Postdoctoral Fellow), and the support of the Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences (I-LABS), a state-of-the-art research center at the University of Washington. In these studies, in-depth interviews and tests with elementary school-age children in racially diverse public schools provide a measure of how racial stereotypes shape racial identity across developmental ages and racial groups. These data, which come from explicit verbal reports, are then used as input to refining tests of implicit cognition to capture the ways that racial stereotypes inform children's implicit racial identities. This research aims to add to the knowledge of how stereotype processes operate prior to adolescence, and also to lay the groundwork for exploring psychological factors related to educational inequality.

Intellectual merit:

The racial identity literature is vast and diverse in theory and methods. This research integrates theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches to examine racial identity formation. The focus is on early childhood responds to a gap in the literature concerning racial identity processes prior to the adolescent years. The use of new research techniques from developmental and social psychology adds an interdisciplinary perspective to the racial identity literature. The research also contributes new information on the ways that youth challenge stereotypes. By recognizing that children possess the ability to resist negative racial stereotypes, and investigating why some children are successful at this, it allows us to uncover how resistance processes might counteract the pernicious effects of cultural stereotypes. Moreover, the project provides new methodological tools for identity research by using explicit, in-depth interview techniques to help design more quantitative measures that are suitable for studying young children.

Broader impacts:

The findings from the study have the potential to impact educational inequality by diminishing the effects of stereotypes on youth development, for minority groups in particular. With better understanding of how children interpret racial stereotypes, such as those related to intellectual ability, teachers are better positioned to teach them to contest pernicious beliefs that otherwise may undermine their academic performance and career pursuits, particularly in disciplines where they are underrepresented such as STEM fields. Such information is useful for parents, teachers and other practitioners working with children, and the children themselves, with considerable benefits at a societal level. I-LABS has established partnerships with federal, state, and local agencies and public-private partnership on childhood learning and education. Operating this research through I-LABS creates the ability to disseminate the scientific discoveries to people who can use them.

Humans are extremely adept at learning new skills by watching and imitating others. Attempts to endow robots with a similar ability have failed to generalize beyond specific tasks, partly because the focus has been on following the trajectory of an action demonstrated by an expert.

The current project investigates a new interdisciplinary approach to imitation learning that is inspired by how humans learn via goal-based imitation. The project's specific objectives include: (1) a new method for imitation based on inferring the underlying goals of human actions rather than following trajectories: actions are executed based on sequences of inferred goals and successfully executed action sequences are cached as higher level goals, leading to hierarchical goal-based imitation; (2) a new approach based on hierarchical Bayesian models (HBMs) is proposed for generalization across objects and tasks, and (3) developmental studies of goal-based imitation learning are proposed for testing predictions of the project?s models in imitation learning experiments with children.

The project represents one of the first efforts to develop rigorous probabilistic models of goal-based imitation learning based on insights from human learning. The results are expected to pave the way for a new generation of machines that can interact fluently with humans, learn new skills from human teachers, and cooperatively solve problems with human partners. The project also provides graduate and undergraduate students with multidisciplinary training in computer science and cognitive science, with K-12 outreach activities aimed at encouraging students from underrepresented groups to pursue careers in science and engineering.

DRL: 1251702

Abstract

This purpose of this project is to explore the origins of scientific reasoning in early childhood through innovative experiments investigating young children?s learning about probabilistic cause-effect relationships in informal settings. Children?s ability to learn from observing probabilistic causal outcomes is an ecologically valid, but understudied issue with implications for STEM educational theory and practice. Much of the causal learning that takes place in infancy and early childhood is by the observation of other people?s actions. Crucially, learning about causes in informal, non-laboratory settings means that an observer often needs to learn cause-effect relationships from probabilistic evidence?observing relations or patterns that do not occur with 100% certainty. This proposal has three objectives: To establish whether young children learn about physical causal relationships from the observation of probabilistic evidence; To investigate whether young children learn about social causal relationships from the observation of probabilistic causal evidence; To investigate whether young children observing a confounded causal system preferentially attribute probabilistic outcomes to variability in social causes or to variability in physical causes.

This project proposes a series of five converging experiments using a newly established methodology to examine the developmental roots of probabilistic causal reasoning in children as young as 24 months of age. In Experiments 1 and 2 young children will observe probabilistic causal displays involving physical objects. In Experiments 3 and 4 children will observe a pattern of probabilistic causal evidence between social agents?people interacting with one another?instead of physical objects. In Experiment 5 children will observe a confounded probabilistic causal display in which the probabilistic nature of the causal relationship could either be attributed to the person performing the intervention or to the physical object being acted upon. In each experiment, the dependent measure is what goal-directed action children take on their own to achieve the outcome based on what they observed.

From the moment of birth, humans begin to form social relationships with others. These relationships, of course, become increasingly more complex across infancy, childhood, and beyond, but the abilities that support this development likely have their foundations in early infancy. The focus of this research project is on one such ability, infants' recognition that there is a correspondence between their own bodies and those of others (such as recognizing one's own hand as the same body part with the same function as one's parents' hands). This recognition of bodily correspondences requires that infants have a basic sense of the structure of their own bodies despite not being able to see them from the outside. This research investigates how infants' brains are organized to recognize and organize information about their own bodies, how this changes over development, and how it might influence their ability to recognize bodily correspondences with others.

This award supports studies in which electroencephalographic (EEG) methods will be used to study the properties of somatotopic body maps in the first weeks and months of life. Specifically, mu rhythm desynchronization and event-related-potential (ERP) responses in one-month-old infants will be measured in response to tactile stimulation of the hands, feet, and lips, with the spatial pattern of these responses being used to chart body maps in the developing human brain. The investigators anticipate that the magnitude and patterning of these brain responses may be modified when the infant is attending to the movements of other people during the periods of tactile stimulation. This will inform how body maps in the infant brain may be part of an early process relating self and other at a bodily level.

A great deal of research with adults has documented the presence of body maps in the human brain. These neural maps have an organized spatial layout. Neighboring parts of the body are connected in an orderly fashion to areas of the brain that process touch and movement. Body maps are important for many aspect of everyday life including the sense of one's own body and controlling our movements. Body maps also likely play an important role in learning from others, through allowing us to register similarities between ourselves and other people. Despite the importance of body maps, very little is currently understood about how they develop in the early months and years of life. The research supported by this award would provide significant new information on the development of body maps and their relation to early learning. The award supports a collaborative, cross-disciplinary network of investigators who will combine expertise in developmental psychology and infant learning, brain science, cognitive science, computer modelling, and robotics. The proposed network will also support the development and training of junior investigators through specific activities designed to expose them to the benefits of an interdisciplinary approach.

Advances in methods for safely measuring the brain activity of human infants are allowing new questions to be asked concerning the role of body maps in early learning. The proposed research involves using magnetoencephalography (MEG) to non-invasively measure responses of the infant brain to tactile stimulation of different parts of the body (e.g., hands vs. feet), and to relate these responses to aspects of infant learning. Another set of studies involving electroencephalography (EEG) will examine how body maps facilitate early imitation and learning from others. Insights from these studies will inform (and be informed by) a further strain of research using computer modelling that takes bodily factors into account in designing robotic systems that can learn from people. The research questions will also provide insight into the control of brain-computer interfaces that can assist disabled individuals in learning to control artificial limbs and other external devices.

This Science of Learning Collaborative Network brings together scientists and educators from University of Washington, University of California-Santa Cruz, and partners in Chile to examine the inter-generational transfer of math-gender stereotypes and math self-concepts in K-3 students. A fundamental challenge for the science of learning is to deepen our understanding of why certain academic Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines, but not others, have significant disparities in who chooses to pursue those disciplines. Cultural stereotypes about "who does STEM" have been shown to influence such disparities. The impact of STEM stereotypes has been documented in adults. However, the origins of these stereotypes and their influence early in the STEM 'pipeline' are understudied. Research shows that the elementary school period is a critical time that begins to shape children's interests, motivation, and skills in academic fields. This collaborative network examines the mechanisms of transfer of information within the family environment, and the ways in which this is tied to students' actual math achievement in the classroom. The network is designed to disseminate findings to families, educators, policymakers, and students using a series of workshops and webinars. The network's outreach efforts focus on translating the scientific findings into actionable strategies that teachers can use in their classrooms and parents can use at home, which will shorten the gap between discovery and educational practice.

The network investigates the role of "non-academic" (psychological) factors that influence children's learning of math. The two principal research questions are: (a) the interrelation among child, parent, and teacher stereotypes about math, and (b) how these influence children's developing math self-concepts, their math achievement (grades, test scores), and career interests in STEM. Chile is a particularly important cultural context for investigating how cultural stereotypes serve to discourage math participation/achievement in young children, because it represents a society in which math-gender stereotypes are strong, historically persistent, and amenable to study. The network is highly interdisciplinary, assembling developmental scientists, social psychologists, educators, and community leaders. The network adopts a multi-method approach: (a) combing both implicit (child IAT) and explicit (self-report) measures about "who does math," (b) examining the relative contribution of parent and teacher interactions on children's emerging math identity, and (c) investigating the influence of educational and community contexts (including SES and school characteristics). The network will use the results to teach parents, students, teachers, and communities about the scientific process both in the United States and in Latin America.

The award is from the Science of Learning-Collaborative Networks (SL-CN) Program, with funding from the SBE Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences (BCS), the SBE Office of Multidisciplinary Activities (SMA), and the Office of International Science and Engineering (OISE).

The underrepresentation of women in STEM disciplines is a societal problem with economic implications. Despite the narrowing of the gap in math performance between boys and girls in the past two decades, gender disparities still influence students' decisions to enter math-related careers. Young students' math self-concepts have been found to predict future choices in math-related domains. As early as elementary school--and in the absence of gender differences in math achievement--girls have lower math self-concepts than boys. Developmental scientists examining the factors implicated in women's underrepresentation in STEM distinguish two interrelated constructs. The first is the child's belief about the link between math and gender (i.e., a belief about a social group and "who does math"), which can be called a math-gender stereotype. The second is how strongly children link themselves to math (i.e., whether a child "identifies with math"), which can be called a math self-concept. This proposal is funded by the EHR Core Research program, which supports fundamental research in STEM learning and learning environments, broadening participation in STEM, and STEM workforce development.

This project will examine the development of math-gender stereotypes (Experiment 1), math self-concepts (Experiment 2), and their consequences for math motivation and career interest (Experiment 3). In experiment 1, using a cross-sectional approach, the researchers will examine the developmental emergence of the pervasive U.S. stereotype that math is "for males" in elementary school. In Experiment 2, focus will be on the emergence of how strongly boys and girls associate themselves with math (math self-concept) and possible gender differences in this developmental pathway. In Experiment 3, the project team will verify the developmental order using a fine-grained longitudinal approach, and trace the consequences for elementary school boys' and girls' motivation for math and their future career interest in STEM. Taken together, Experiments 1 through 3 will deepen understanding about when and how math stereotypes and self-concepts emerge in young children, with direct implications for the design of novel interventions aimed at reducing math stereotyping and strengthening math self-concepts.