JDIL · Joint Dynamics During Infant Learning
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2020-04-01 → 2022-03-31
- EU contribution
- €212,934
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Joint Dynamics During Infant Learning
Infants spend most of their waking time interacting with their caregivers. However, the mechanisms through which these early exchanges shape infants’ development and learning remain mysterious. Most of our understanding of how the brain subserves attention and learning early on has come from studies that have mainly considered infants as passive recipients of information, and studied individual brains in isolation. Thus, we know very little about the neural substrates of how information is shared between caregivers and infants engaged in social interaction, and how this may impact early learning. The aim of this project is to shed unprecedented light on how dynamic social interactions affect attention and word learning during infancy. It has three research objectives: 1) determine how attentional and communicational dynamics are organized in naturally interacting dyads, depending on whether there is something to learn in the proximate environment; 2) determine how attentional and communicational dynamics between infants and parents impact word-learning; 3) examine how infants actively shape their own learning during naturalistic interactions. Our findings should have substantial implications for theories of development, as well as diagnostic and educational practices.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Infants spend most of their waking time interacting with their caregivers, and the mechanisms through which these dynamic social exchanges shape the development of sub-personal processes such as attention and learning remain mysterious. Most of our understanding of how the brain subserves early attention and learning has come from studies that viewed infants as relatively passive recipient of information, and studied individual brains in isolation. Correspondingly, we know very little about the neural substrates of how information is shared between caregivers and infants during learning interactions. The aim of this project is to shed unprecedented light on how dynamic social interactions affect attention and learning during infancy. I will build both on my own recent research, that has shown that internal metacognitive monitoring and epistemic requests from the infant shape social interactions and learning more than had previously been thought, and combine this approach - that views the infant as an active component of early social interactions - with innovative research by my supervisor that provides the possibility to record brain activity from infants and their caregivers simultaneously while they are interacting, and to analyze them with specific tools that allow a fine description of the dynamics of these interaction. Combining these two approaches will provide invaluable insight into the mechanisms involved during early learning in social contexts. Our findings will have substantial implications for theories of development, as well as diagnostic and educational practices. More specifically, increasing our understanding of the complex dynamics between infants and their social partners is essential for: i) enriching developmental theory; ii) developing new techniques to optimize learning and iii) understanding the mechanisms that give rise to developmental delays.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- UNIVERSITY OF EAST LONDON · LondonCoordinatorUnited Kingdom
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union