Sept. 14 Hyo Gweon, Assistant Professor of Psychology
Stanford
To give a fish, or teach how to fish? Children's ability to decide what, how, and when to teach others
Abstract:
Humans are remarkable social
learners. What we know about the world is heavily mediated by what
others know about the world, and in turn, we affect what others know
by sharing our own knowledge. Furthermore, as teachers, we have an
intuitive grasp of how to help others learn about the world, selecting
information that is relevant and helpful for others. What cognitive
capacities underlie this ability to teach? Inspired by
recent developmental work on children’s abilities as active interpreters
of socially transmitted information, I will present a series of
recent experiments that highlight children's abilities as active providers
of information. These studies suggest that young children can tailor
their teaching with respect to the learners’ goals, epistemic states,
and expected utility. Even early in life, children can use their
understanding of others to not only learn about the world around
them, but also to help others learn about the world. These
communicative interactions between a provider and a recipient of
information provide deeply interesting opportunities to study the
inferential processes and the representations that underlie our ability to
acquire, share, and accumulate knowledge.
Oct. 5 Katherine Graf Estes, Assistant Professor of Psychology
UC Davis
Naturalistic challenges in statistical language learning
Oct. 19- Zi Lin Sim, Graduate Student
UC Berkeley
Probabilistic Reasoning in ASD Children
Abstract: Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) often show difficulties in learning and generalization. Yet the capacity to make inductive generalizations is a hallmark of human learning. Previous research has demonstrated that typical children make such generalizations with much ease, and recent work with 6- to 12-month-old TD infants has revealed an early emergence of “intuitive statistics” (the idea that a random sample enables one to make predictions about a population and vice versa), which may enable children to engage in inductive learning within the first few years of life. As such, we hypothesized that autistic children would show weaknesses in probabilistic reasoning. In this talk, I discuss preliminary findings from two studies examining probabilistic reasoning in 7- to 12-year-old ASD and TD children (groups were matched in chronological age and IQ).
Oct. 26 Kathryn Humphreys, Postdoctoral Fellow
Stanford University
Understanding the impact on early life stress and child psychopathology
Abstract: Substantial evidence indicates that experiences early in life have an outsized impact on later functioning. In particular, experiences of early adversity (e.g., abuse or neglect) longitudinally predict increased rates of psychopathology. In this talk, using data from children who experienced institutional (orphanage) rearing, a severe form of neglect, I will discuss: (1) the association between adverse early experience and psychopathology, (2) potential mechanisms by which stress gets "under the skin", and (3) factors that mitigate risk. In addition, I will provide evidence challenging traditional conceptualizations that developmental adaptions to early adversity are necessarily maladaptive.
Nov.2 Silvia Bunge, Professor of Psychology
UC Berkeley
Eyetracking as a window into typical and atypical brain development
My goal for this talk is to illustrate ways in which eyetracking can be used to gain insights into typical and atypical human brain development. I will present results from a recent study of cognitive control in children with Tourette Syndrome, in which we used pupillary and eyeblink measures to make inferences about neurochemistry as well as the timing of engagement of cognitive control.
Nov. 9- Michael Rutter, Professor of Developmental Psychopathology
King's College, London
Nov.16- Azzurra Ruggieri, Postdoctoral Fellow
UC Berkeley & Max Planck Institute, Germany
Ecological learning: How children adapt their active learning strategies to achieve efficiency.
Abstract: This talk presents the results of recent studies investigating the effectiveness of toddlers and children's active learning strategies. In particular, it will focus on how children adapt their active learning strategies (e.g., question-asking, explorative behavior, free play...) in response to the task characteristics, to the statistical structure of the hypothesis space, and to
the feedback received. Such adaptiveness and flexibility is crucial to achieve efficiency in situations of uncertainty, when testing alternative hypotheses, making decisions, drawing causal inferences and solving categorization tasks.
Nov. 30 Dan Yurovsky, Postdoc Fellow in Psychology
Stanford
Toward a coordination account of early word learning
Abstract: Early word
learning is fast; children produce more than 1000 words by the time they are
able to run. This rapid acquisition is puzzling because, while children show
early competence in statistical learning, their performance is severely
constrained by developing attentional and memory system. I propose resolve to
this puzzle by reframing language learning as a coordination problem: Rapid
language acquisition emerges from the tight calibration between children’s
developing learning mechanisms and parental language input
