Overheads: Infant Intelligence and Memory Carolyn R. Fallahi, Ph. D.

The History of Infant Intelligence Underestimates their abilities Why?

How Infants Learn Learning = a relatively permanent change in behavior resulting from experience. Born with ability Needs experience

Types of Learning Habituation and dishabituation Classical conditioning Operant conditioning Social learning Babies remember things that give them pleasure! Problem solving.

Intelligence The ability to perform goal-oriented behavior that is conscious and deliberate and adaptive. Infant intelligence – 2 year mark. Early tests – developmental in nature. Later tests – verbally-based.

Self-righting tendency Definition 18-24 month mark.

memory Infant researcher Carolyn Rouie-Collier Is the infant’s memory of the mobile conscious? Do infants acquire the ability to consciously remember the past? Study with 9 month old girls. Study with 7 month old infants. What happens in the first 6 months?

Why does conscious memory develop later than other learning? Theory. Maturation of certain brain structures, e.g. hippocampus. Or… depends on development of cognitive structures. Infantile amnesia. Support for this.

Imitation Tiffany Field (1982) – 36 hour old infants. Meltzoff (1989) – imitation biologically based. Deferred imitation – Meltzoff (1988) Piaget versus Metlzoff