M.Sc. Psych. Wiebke Pätzold - Does communication induce object representation in infants?
23.10.2017 (Mo), Von-Melle-Park 5, Raum 3034
Abstract
We know from behavioral studies that infants follow and react to points towards occluded toys at the end of the first year. Up to this point, however, these findings have not been validated by physiological or neurophysiological markers, so how do we know what infants are actually processing when they crawl towards a hidden toy?
I will present findings from my ongoing PhD project where I use an eye tracking device and EEG to get a closer look at point comprehension and object representation in infancy.
In a first set of studies, a remote eye tracking device was used to track infants’ gaze behavior as well as record their pupil size. Change in pupil size is a highly sensitive measure of arousal, so we tracked infants’ arousal over different visual scenarios that contained communicative acts as well as the appearance – or lack thereof – of interesting toys. Our findings imply that by 12 months of age, infants anticipate the appearance of an object if its location is highlighted by a pointing gesture beforehand.
In another set of studies, we investigated gamma band oscillations in the infant EEG. Activity in the gamma band (20-60 Hz) in infants has been correlated with object binding and representation of occluded objects, so we used this measure to look at how infants represent an object that is communicated to them. We found that 10-months-old infants had increased activation in the gamma band when (a) an object was occluded and (b) they saw an actor point to an occluded object. These results point towards early object representation following referential communication.