AUTHOR=Barry Ryan A. , Graf Estes Katharine , Rivera Susan M. 

TITLE=Domain general learning: Infants use social and non-social cues when learning object statistics

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology

VOLUME=6

YEAR=2015

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00551

DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00551

ISSN=1664-1078

ABSTRACT=<p>Previous research has shown that infants can learn from social cues. But is a social cue more effective at directing learning than a non-social cue? This study investigated whether 9-month-old infants (<italic>N</italic> = 55) could learn a visual statistical regularity in the presence of a distracting visual sequence when attention was directed by either a social cue (a person) or a non-social cue (a rectangle). The results show that both social and non-social cues can guide infants’ attention to a visual shape sequence (and away from a distracting sequence). The social cue more effectively directed attention than the non-social cue during the familiarization phase, but the social cue did not result in significantly stronger learning than the non-social cue. The findings suggest that domain general attention mechanisms allow for the comparable learning seen in both conditions.</p>