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. 2015 May:133:47-56.
doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2015.01.007. Epub 2015 Mar 7.

Infants' statistical learning: 2- and 5-month-olds' segmentation of continuous visual sequences

Lauren Krogh Slone  1 , Scott P Johnson  2
Affiliations

Infants' statistical learning: 2- and 5-month-olds' segmentation of continuous visual sequences

Lauren Krogh Slone et al. J Exp Child Psychol. 2015 May.

Abstract

Past research suggests that infants have powerful statistical learning abilities; however, studies of infants' visual statistical learning offer differing accounts of the developmental trajectory of and constraints on this learning. To elucidate this issue, the current study tested the hypothesis that young infants' segmentation of visual sequences depends on redundant statistical cues to segmentation. A sample of 20 2-month-olds and 20 5-month-olds observed a continuous sequence of looming shapes in which unit boundaries were defined by both transitional probability and co-occurrence frequency. Following habituation, only 5-month-olds showed evidence of statistically segmenting the sequence, looking longer to a statistically improbable shape pair than to a probable pair. These results reaffirm the power of statistical learning in infants as young as 5 months but also suggest considerable development of statistical segmentation ability between 2 and 5 months of age. Moreover, the results do not support the idea that infants' ability to segment visual sequences based on transitional probabilities and/or co-occurrence frequencies is functional at the onset of visual experience, as has been suggested previously. Rather, this type of statistical segmentation appears to be constrained by the developmental state of the learner. Factors contributing to the development of statistical segmentation ability during early infancy, including memory and attention, are discussed.

Keywords: Co-occurrence frequency; Cognitive development; Habituation; Sequence segmentation; Transitional probability; Visual statistical learning.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Sample (A) habituation sequence, (B) familiar test sequence, and (C) 2-1 test sequence. The heart is shown in black here but was white in the experiment.
Figure 2
Figure 2
(A) Two-month-olds’ and (B) five-month-olds’ mean looking duration to the familiar and 2-1 test displays, by block. Error bars represent standard error.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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