On August 1, 2001 the J. S. McDonnell Foundation awarded Richard N. Aslin (University of Rochester, NY) and Jacques Mehler (SISSA in Trieste, Italy) a grant to hold three or four workshops on “Infant looking: Methods used to assess cognitive development.” These workshops will involve participants each and will focus on both looking-time measures and other methodologies (e.g., ERP, fMRI) that could be used in combination to gather more definitive data on infant perception, cognition, and language development. James S. McDonnell Foundation Workshops on Infant Cognition

The focus of the first workshop was on looking-time measures as used in perception, cognition, and language development. Paradigms reviewed included preferential looking, habituation, and violation of expectancy. The participants were: Renee Baillargeon Brian Scholl Luca Bonatti Susan Carey John Colombo Robin Cooper Jim Dannemiller Franck Ramus Janet Werker Photo of participants Workshop #1: Tarrytown, NY October 5-7, 2001

The focus of the second workshop was on eye-tracking, ERP, fMRI, and NIRS (optical topography) as measures of behavior and neural activity which may complement data obtained using looking-time techniques. The participants were: Workshop #2: Venice, Italy March 8-10, 2002 Luca Bonatti B. J. Casey Anne Christophe Gergely Csibra Ghislaine Dehaene- Lambertz Chuck Nelson Helen Neville John Richards Brian Scholl Nuria Sebastian-Gales Dan Swingley

The focus of the third workshop was on eye-tracking, looking time, and comparative measures of perception and cognition in human infants and non-human primates. The participants were: Robin Cooper Rick Gilmore Marc Hauser Scott Johnson Jim Morgan Amy Needham Jen Saffran Paul Quinn Workshop #3: Chatham, MA May 28-30, 2002