Transcript ICIS 2004 Orientation Specificity in Infant Event Reps

Orientation Specificity for Infant Event Representations
Peter Gordon, Kristin Bellanca, Margaret Heller, Noa Porath
Teachers College, Columbia University
Event Videos
Introduction
Habituation Data
• Processing of configurational information is
often highly affected by inversion
Habituation
GIVE w/o toy
GIVE w/ toy
Eye-Tracking Data
Test
% looking to toy location
Fig 3 Give
Percent Looking time
0.7
Fig 2 GIVE: Upright vs. Hug
Mean Looking time (sec)
40
0.6
With Toy
0.5
Without Toy
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
Give
30
0
Hug
Approach
10
Fig 4 Hug
0.70
Hab1
Hab2
Hab3
Hab4
Hab5
Hab6
Avg
Old
Percent Looking time
0
Avg
New
Trials
• Previous research has focused on the
perception of static stimuli such as faces, pictures
in story books or objects
• Where do infants look when viewing such
actions?
• Does gaze direction to relevant aspects of an
event predict increased looking when those
elements are deleted from the event?
Background on Inversion
Effects
• Processing of configurational information is
particularly affected by inversion whereas
perception of discrete features is not
• FACES: Recognition is more affected by inversion
than for non-face stimuli (Yin, 1969).
• Children do not show special inversion sensitivity
to faces over houses until teens (Carey & Diamond,
1977)
• Meaningful information such as emotional
expression can often be completely lost as a result
of inversion as in the Margaret Thatcher Illusion
(see above)
• PICTURES & OBJECTS: 18 – 24 month olds
naming pictures are not affected by inversion, but
do show effects when naming objects (DeLoache et
al., 2000)
With Toy
0.50
Without Toy
0.40
0.30
0.20
0.10
Approach
Approach
Interaction
Departure
Approach
Interaction
Interaction
Departure
Departure
Fig 1 GIVE Upright vs. Upside Down
GIVE Upside Down w/toy
40
30
GIVE Upside Down w/o toy
Give Upside Dow n
Give
0.7
Give UD
0.6
With Toy
0.5
Without Toy
Percent Looking time
• Do they show evidence of meaningful
interpretation for upside-down actions?
0.60
0.00
Mean Looking time (sec)
• How do infants perceive dynamic events when
presented in an inverted orientation?
Departure
HUG w/o toy
HUG w/ toy
20
Interaction
20
10
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
0
Hab1
Hab2
Hab3
Hab4
Hab5
Hab6
Avg Old
Avg
New
Trials
Approach
Interaction
Departure
ASL 504 infra-red remote
eye tracker
The GIVE/HUG Effect
• When 10 month olds see an event of
GIVING, they treat a toy undergoing transfer
of possession with special status
• When habituated to viewing a GIVING
event on video, they show recovery of looking
time when the toy is missing in the NEW test
video stimuli
• The toy is RELEVANT to the action of
GIVING (It isn’t giving without the transferred
object)
• Infants do not show recovery of looking
time when the missing object is IRRELEVANT
to the action, such as when two people are
hugging and one is carrying a toy (Fig. 1)
Eye Tracking
• Eye tracking of infants as they watched the
GIVE event video revealed that, during the
transfer of possession, they looked at the toy
more than any other element in the scene
• When the toy was missing in the test video,
they continued to look at where the toy had
been in the original video (Fig. 3)
• With the HUG videos, infants looked at the
toy much less during the interaction phase,
and almost never when it was no longer in the
video (Fig. 4)
Effects of Event Inversion for GIVE
• Eye tracking for the upside down video showed patterns
of eye gaze that were almost indistinguishable from those in
the upright orientation (Fig. 5)
• In the w/o toy condition, eye gaze to the location of the
missing toy was somewhat attenuated, but was still greater
than in the irrelevant-object (HUG) condition
• Infants’ gaze is drawn to the transferred object for the
inverted GIVE event just as in the upright orientation
BUT ... Do infants understand the inverted GIVE event?
• In the habituation procedure, infants did not show
recovery of looking time when the toy was removed from the
GIVE upside down video (Fig. 2)
• This contrasts sharply with the recovery of LT in the
upright condition
• The effect of inversion appears to be that infants could not
make sense of the action and the role of the toy in that
action, even though they were looking at the toy in the
appropriate locations
• This suggests that recovery of looking time in habituation
for dynamic events is strong evidence of infants’ meaningful
interpretation of those events