Information Processing

As explained in Chapter 2, Piaget’s sweeping overview of four periods of cognition contrasts with information-processing theory, a perspective originally modeled after computer functioning, including input, memory, programs, analysis, and output. Just as input connects with a program and then leads to output on a computer, sensation leads to perception, which may produce cognition. Those links are detailed in information-processing theory.

For infants, output might be moving a hand to uncover a toy (object permanence), saying a word to signify recognition (e.g., mama), or looking at one photo longer than another (habituation). Some recent studies examine changes in brain waves when infants see a picture (Koulder et al., 2013), research that both confirms and refutes Piaget’s theory.

What Next? Information-processing research asks what these babies are thinking as they both pull on the same block. Will those thoughts lead to hitting, crying, or sharing?

GILKIS – EMIELKE VAN WYK/GALLO IMAGES/GETTY IMAGES

To understand the many aspects of information processing in infancy, consider the baby’s reaction to feeling hungry. A newborn simply cries with hunger pangs as a reflex, but an older hungry infant hears its mother’s voice, looks for her, reaches to be picked up, and then nuzzles at her breast, or, at an even older age, signs or says something to indicate hunger. Each step of this process requires information to be processed. Older infants are much more thoughtful and effective than newborns because of more advanced information processing. Advances occur week by week or even day by day in the first year, contrary to Piaget’s notion of six discrete stages (Cohen & Cashon, 2006).

The information-processing perspective, aided by modern technology, has uncovered many aspects of infant cognition. As one researcher summarizes, “Rather than bumbling babies, they are individuals who…can learn surprisingly fast about the patterns of nature” (Keil, 2011, p. 1023). Concepts and categories seem to develop in infants’ brains by 6 months or earlier (Mandler & DeLoach, 2012).

Consider the concept of number. Habituation and brain scans reveal that 6-month-olds can detect the difference between displays of 8 and 16 dots. By 9 months, they can do even better, differentiating between 8 and 12 dots (Lipton & Spelke, 2003). This suggests that not only that vision is more perceptive, but also that infants have some mental apparatus that registers more or less.

The information-processing perspective helps tie together many aspects of infant cognition. Indeed, if adults want to know how intelligent a particular baby is, the best way probably is to measure speed of information processing. Rapid habituation is an encouraging sign; babies like novelty.

In earlier decades, infant intelligence was measured via age of sitting up, grasping, and so on, but we now know that, unless a child is severely impaired, age of achieving motor skills does not correlate with later intellectual achievement. However, information-processing research seems to find that early attention and habituation correlate with later intelligence. Babies who focus intently on new stimuli, and then quickly become habituated, may be more intelligent (Bornstein & Columbo, 2012).

Now let us look at two specific aspects of infant cognition that illustrate the information-processing approach: affordances and memory. Affordances concern perception or, by analogy, input. Memory concerns brain organization and output—that is, storage and retrieval.

Affordances

Perception, remember, is the processing of information that arrives at the brain from the sense organs. Decades of thought and research led Eleanor and James Gibson to conclude that perception is far from automatic (E. J. Gibson, 1969; J. J. Gibson, 1979). Perception—for infants, as for the rest of us—is a cognitive accomplishment that requires selectivity: “Perceiving is active, a process of obtaining information about the world…We don’t simply see, we look” (E. J. Gibson, 1988, p. 5). Or, as one neuroscientist said, “You see what you expect or are trained to see, not what is there” (Freeman, quoted in Bower, 2007, p. 106).

The environment (people, places, and objects) affords, or offers, many opportunities to interact with whatever is perceived (E. J. Gibson, 1997). Each of these opportunities is called an affordance. Which particular affordance is perceived and acted on depends on four factors: sensory awareness, immediate motivation, current level of development, and past experience.

As an example, imagine that you are lost in an unfamiliar city. You need to ask directions. Of whom? Not the first person you see. You want someone knowledgeable and approachable. Affordance is what you seek, and you scan facial expression, body language, gender, dress, and more of the passersby (Miles, 2009).

Age of the perceiver affects what affordances are perceived. For example, since toddlers enjoy running as soon as their legs allow it, every open space affords running: a meadow, a building’s long hall, a highway. To adults, affordance of running is much more limited, as they notice a bull grazing in the meadow, neighbors behind the hallway doors, or traffic on the road. Furthermore, because motivation is pivotal in affordances, toddlers start moving when most adults prefer to stay put.

Selective perception of affordances depends not only on age, motivation, and context but also on culture. Just as a baby might be oblivious to something adults consider crucial—or vice versa—an American in, say, Cambodia might miss an important sign of the social network. In every nation, foreigners behave in ways considered rude, but their behavior may simply indicate that their affordances differ from those of the native people.

Variation in affordance is also apparent within cultures. City-dwellers complain that visitors from rural areas walk too slowly, yet visitors complain that the natives are always in a hurry. Sidewalks afford either fast motion or views of urban architecture, depending on the perceiver.

Experience affects which affordances are perceived. This is obvious in studies of depth perception. Research demonstrating this began with an apparatus called the visual cliff, designed to provide the illusion of a sudden drop-off between one horizontal surface and another (see photo). Six-month-olds, urged forward by their mothers, wiggled toward mom over the supposed edge of the cliff, but 10-month-olds, even with mothers’ encouragement, fearfully refused to budge (E. J. Gibson & Walk, 1960).

Depth Perception This toddler in a laboratory in Berkeley, California, is crawling on the experimental apparatus called a visual cliff. She stops at the edge of what she perceives as a drop-off.

MARK RICHARDS/PHOTOEDIT

Scientists once thought that a visual deficit—specifically, inadequate depth perception—prevented 6-month-olds from seeing the drop, which was why they crawled forward. According to this hypothesis, as the visual cortex matured, 10-month-olds perceived that crawling over a cliff afforded falling. Later research (using more advanced technology) disproved that interpretation. Even 3-month-olds notice the drop: Their heart rate slows, and their eyes open wide when they are placed over the cliff. Their depth perception is in place, but until they can crawl, they do not realize that crawling over an edge affords falling.

This awareness of the visual cliff hazard depends on experience. The difference is in processing, not input; in affordance, not sensory ability. Further research on affordances of the visual cliff includes the social context, with the tone of the mother’s encouragement indicating whether or not the cliff affords crawling (Kim et al., 2010).

A similar sequence happens with fear. By 9 months, infants attend to snakes and spiders more readily than to other similar images, but they do not yet fear them. A few months later, perhaps because they have learned from others, they are afraid of such creatures. Thus perception is a prerequisite, but it does not always lead to affordance (LoBue, 2013).

Despite all the variations from one person to another in affordances perceived, all babies are attracted to things that move. They stare at passing cars, flickering images on a screen, mobiles—because of their inborn information-processing programs. As soon as they can, they move their bodies—grabbing, scooting, crawling, walking—which changes what the world affords them. As a result, infants strive to master each motor skill (Adolph, 2012).

Grab Him As with most babies, she loves grabbing any creature, hoping for a reaction. To recognize that people change over time, imagine these two a few years or decades older. She would not grab him, and if she did, he would not be placid.

JOSEFINE BOLANDER JOHNER RF/GETTY IMAGES

Other creatures that move, especially an infant’s own caregivers, afford pleasure to every infant. It’s almost impossible to teach a baby not to chase and grab moving creatures, including dogs, cats, or even bugs. Universally, moving objects are more attractive than static ones.

The infant’s interest in motion was the inspiration for another experiment (van Hof et al., 2008). A ball was moved at various speeds in front of infants aged 3 to 9 months. Most tried to touch or catch the ball as it passed within reach. However, they differed in their perception of whether the balls afforded catching.

Sometimes younger infants did not reach for slow-moving balls, yet tried to grasp the faster balls. They failed, touching the ball only about 20 percent of the time. By contrast, the 9-month-olds knew when a ball afforded catching. They grabbed the slower balls and did not try to catch the fastest ones; their success rate was almost 100 percent. This finding “follows directly from one of the key concepts of ecological psychology, that animals perceive the environment in terms of action possibilities or affordances” (van Hof et al., 2008, p. 193).

Memory

The term infant amnesia refers to the belief that infants remember nothing until about age 2, an idea once accepted by most adults. Information processing has revealed otherwise; memory is evident in very young babies.

However, memory is fragile in the first months of life. Both a certain amount of experience and a certain amount of brain maturation are required in order to process and remember anything (Bauer et al., 2010).

Infants have difficulty storing new memories in their first year, and older children are often unable to describe events that occurred when they were younger. One reason is linguistic: People use words to store (and sometimes distort) memories, so preverbal children have difficulty with recall (Richardson & Hayne, 2007), while adults cannot access early memories because they did not have words to solidify them.

Selective Amnesia As we grow older, we forget about spitting up, nursing, crying, and almost everything else from our early years. However, strong emotions (love, fear, mistrust) may leave lifelong traces.

© 1989 UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE

A series of experiments, however, reveals that very young infants can remember, even if they cannot later put memories into words. Memories are particularly evident if:

• Motivation is high.
• Retrieval is strengthened by reminders and repetition.

The most dramatic proof of infant memory comes from innovative experiments in which 3-month-olds learned to move a mobile by kicking their legs (Rovee-Collier, 1987, 1990). The infants lay on their backs connected to a mobile by means of a ribbon tied to one foot (see photo). Virtually every baby began making occasional kicks (as well as random arm movements and noises) and realized, that kicking made the mobile move. They then kicked more vigorously and frequently, sometimes laughing at their accomplishment. So far, this is no surprise—observing self-activated movement is highly reinforcing to infants, a dynamic system. [Lifespan Link: Chapter 1.]

When some infants had the mobile-and-ribbon apparatus reinstalled and reconnected one week later, most started to kick immediately. Their reaction indicated that they remembered their previous experience. But when other 3-month-old infants were retested two weeks later, they began with only random kicks. Apparently they had forgotten what they had learned—evidence that memory is fragile early in life. But that conclusion needs revision, or at least qualification.

The lead researcher, Carolyn Rovee-Collier, developed another experiment demonstrating that 3-month-old infants could remember after two weeks if they had a brief reminder session before being retested (Rovee-Collier & Hayne, 1987). A reminder session is any experience that helps people recollect an idea, a thing, or an event.

He Remembers! In this demonstration of Rovee-Collier’s experiment, a young infant immediately remembers how to make the familiar mobile move. (Unfamiliar mobiles do not provoke the same reaction.) He kicks his right leg and flails both arms, just as he learned to do several weeks ago.

COURTESY OF CAROLYN ROVEE-COLLIER

In this particular reminder session, two weeks after the initial training, the infants watched the mobile move but were not tied to it and were positioned so that they could not kick. The next day, when they were again connected to the mobile and positioned so that they could move their legs, they kicked as they had learned to do two weeks earlier. Apparently, watching the mobile move on the previous day had revived their faded memory. The information about making the mobile move was stored in their brains, but they needed processing time to retrieve it. The reminder session provided that time.

Other research finds that repeated reminders are more powerful than single reminders and that context is crucial, especially for infants younger than 9 months old: Being tested in the same room as the initial experience aids memory (Rovee-Collier & Cuevas, 2009a).

Who is thinking? They all are. Julie is stretching her sensorimotor intelligence as she rotates a piece to make it fit, while her mother decides if her 2-year-old is ready for a puzzle with 20 cardboard pieces. But the champion thinker may be baby Samara, as her mirror neurons reflect actions she can think but not yet do.

LUCAS OLENIUK/TORONTO STAR VIA GETTY IMAGES

After about 6 months of age, infants retain information for a longer time than younger babies do, with less training or reminding. Toward the end of the first year, many kinds of memory are apparent. For example, suppose a 9-month-old watches someone playing with a toy he or she has never seen. The next day, if given the toy, the 9-month-old will play with it in the same way as he or she had observed. Younger infants will not.

Many experiments show that toddlers can transfer learning from one object or experience to another and that they learn from various people and events—from parents and strangers, from other babies and older siblings, from picture books and family photographs (Hayne & Simcock, 2009). The dendrites and neurons of the brain change to reflect their experiences and memories even in the first years of life. [Lifespan Link: Experience-related brain growth is described in Chapter 5.]

Note that these experiments are further evidence of several facts already mentioned: Babies observe affordances carefully, they are especially attuned to movement, and deferred imitation is possible before Piaget’s stage six begins.

One reason earlier scientists underestimated memory is that they failed to distinguish between implicit memory and explicit memory. Implicit memory is memory that remains hidden until a particular stimulus brings it to mind (like the mobile reminder session), whereas explicit memory is memory that can be recalled on demand. Explicit memories are usually verbal, and therefore “although explicit memory emerges sometime between 6 and 12 months, it is far from fully developed” (Nelson, de Haan et al., 2006, p. 23).

The particular part of the brain on which explicit memory depends is the hippocampus, present at birth but very immature until about age 5 or 6. [Lifespan Link: The function of the hippocampus is explained in Chapter 8.] It is no surprise that this timing coincides with the beginning of formal education, because children are much better at memorizing at that age.

Implicit memories, by contrast, begin before birth. Implicit memories are evident in all the examples just mentioned, when evidence of memory comes from the situation, not from the answer to a spoken question.

For instance, adults who knew a language in childhood often have no explicit memory of it: They claim to have forgotten all the Spanish, French, Chinese, or whatever. When asked the word for a common object in that language, they honestly reply that they do not know (Bowers et al., 2009). Moreover, when first tested, such adults are no better at comprehension than those who never heard the language.

However, repeated exposure uncovers implicit memories from infancy. Thus, a student who has forgotten childhood Spanish catches on more quickly in Spanish class than does the student who never knew Spanish as an infant. Apparently, the first weeks of class serve as a reminder session. Reminders may also explain the phenomenon of déjà vu; people, places, and smells sometimes seem familiar or emotionally evocative, even if they were never experienced before, because something very similar occurred in infancy and was stored implicitly.

Infants probably store in their brains many emotions and sensations that they cannot readily retrieve. The information-processing approach finds that infant memory is crucial for later development—far more so than are other components of early thought, such as attention and processing speed (Rose et al., 2009). Extensive research finds that memories help in early word learning, and those words in turn help encode later memories (Richardson & Hayne, 2007). People need to talk to babies, long before the babies can talk back.

The crucial insight from information processing is that the brain is a very active organ, even in early infancy. Therefore, the particulars of experiences and memory are critically important in determining what a child knows or does not know. Soon generalization is possible. In one study, after 6-month-olds had had only two half-hour sessions with a novel puppet, a month later they remembered the experience—an amazing feat of memory for babies who could not talk or even stand up (Giles & Rovee-Collier, 2011).

Many studies show that infants remember not only specific events and objects but also patterns and general goals (Keil, 2011). Some examples come from research, such as memory of what syllables and rhythms are heard and how objects move in relation to other objects. Additional examples arise from close observations of babies at home, such as what they expect from Mommy as compared to Daddy or what details indicate bedtime. Every day of their young lives, infants are processing information and storing conclusions.