Research article summary (published 29 Jun 2009):

Infant cognition: going full factorial with pupil dilation.

Full Abstract

The violation-of-expectation (VOE) paradigm and related methods are the main tools used to study high-level cognition in preverbal infants. Infants' differential looking to conceptually implausible/impossible events has been used as an index of early cognitive competence in many areas, including object knowledge, physics, language, and number. However, an event's plausibility is commonly confounded with its perceptual novelty or familiarity, leading to a variety of interpretations for looking time data (Bogartz, Shinskey & Speaker, 1997). This illustrative study demonstrates the value of factorial designs, in which perceptual (novelty-familiarity) and conceptual (possible-impossible) variables are independently and jointly explored. It also introduces pupil dilation as a viable and complementary dependent measure to study infant cognition. We show that pupil data can assist in the interpretation of otherwise equivocal looking time data. The discussion focuses on methodological considerations in infancy research.

Author information

Author/s: Jackson, Iain (I); Sirois, Sylvain (S);

Affiliation: School of Psychological Sciences, The University of Manchester, Manchester, UK.

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article; Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

Journal: Developmental science (Dev Sci), published in England. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2009-Jul; vol 12 (issue 4) : pp 670-9

Dates: Created 2009/07/28; Completed 2009/10/08;

PMID: 19635092, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 10/8/2009, IMS Date: )

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

Child Development - physiology Cognition - physiology Female Humans Infant

Infant Intelligence Tests Male Psychological Tests Pupil - physiology

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