Using EEG to track consciousness, surprise and metacognition in the infant brain
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1
École Nationale Supérieure, France
My talk will focus on whether and how infants 1) experience perceptual consciousness, 2) rely on bayesian inference during perception, and 3) rely on metacognitive sensitivity to track their own behaviors. I will first describe how one can test for perceptual consciousness in infants by relying on neural signatures of consciousness validated in adult populations. Our studies confirm the presence of these neural signatures in 5 to 15 month-old infants, but also show that such mechanisms are much slower than in adults, and accelerate throughout development Regarding predictive coding, we combined EEG recordings with a cross-modal cueing paradigm and show that, consistent with Bayesian accounts of perception, neural responses for unexpected events are increased in 12 month-olds. However, in infants, this effect of prediction error was observed only during late processing stages and involves the same neural signature as found for perceptual consciousness. Early neural components, by contrast, revealed an amplification for predicted rather than surprising events, suggesting that selective attention enhances perceptual processing for expected events. These results demonstrate that the neural mechanisms underlying the use of predictive signals are already functional in infancy, but follow different dynamics depending on whether expected events are confirmed or instead surprising. Furthermore, they reveal a privileged link between prediction error and consciousness in infants. Regarding metacognition, we demonstrate that infants reflect upon their own (simple) decisions to evaluate their accuracy and adapt subsequent behaviour. We show that after performing a binary choice, 12 and 18-month old infants display appropriate decision confidence by persisting more following correct as compared to incorrect decisions, even though nothing in the external world provides information about their accuracy. Furthermore, we found that an electrophysiological marker of error detection, the Error-Related Negativity, is elicited when 12 month-old infants make an incorrect decision. Hence, although explicit forms of metacognition might mature later during childhood, the mechanisms responsible for metacognitive sensitivity are already functional during the first year of life. I will conclude on perspectives for learning and education.
Keywords:
infants,
EEG,
Brain,
Consciousness,
metacognition,
Learning
Conference:
International Conference - Educational Neuroscience, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, 28 Feb - 29 Feb, 2016.
Presentation Type:
Oral Presentation (invited speakers only)
Topic:
Educational Neuroscience
Citation:
Kouider
S
(2016). Using EEG to track consciousness, surprise and metacognition in the infant brain.
Front. Neurosci.
Conference Abstract:
International Conference - Educational Neuroscience.
doi: 10.3389/conf.fnins.2016.92.00003
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Received:
27 Jan 2016;
Published Online:
23 Mar 2016.
*
Correspondence:
Dr. Sid Kouider, École Nationale Supérieure, Paris, France, sid.kouider@ens.fr