New evidence for systematicity in infants’ curiosity-driven learningHan Ke1*, Gert Westermann1 Ben Malem2 & Katherine Twomey3*

1Lancaster University 2King’s College London, 3University of Manchester*h.ke@lancaster.ac.uk, katherine.twomey@manchester.ac.uk

Literature Review Experiment 2

Experiment 1

Conclusions and future directions

• Researchdemonstratethatinfants’explorationissensitivetofeaturesoftheenvironment,suchasthecomplexityofobjectfeatures(Younger&Fearing,1998;Kovack-Lesh &Oakes,2007).

• Infancystudiestypicallyemploycarefully-designedexperimentswithcomplexitydeterminedapriori.Whetherinfantssystematicallygenerateaparticularlevelofdifficultyduringeveryday,curiosity-drivenexplorationisthereforeunknown.

• Twomey&Westermann’s(2017)modelofvisualcuriosity-drivenlearningpredictedthatinfantswillgenerateintermediatetaskcomplexity(cf.Kidd,Piantadosi&Aslin,2012).Experiment1teststhishypothesis,whileExperiment2extendsthisworktoanaturalisticenvironment.

ShapePrimingparadigm.12-month-oldinfants (labelcondition:n=20,no-labelcondition,n=20)

- ShapePrimingparadigmwith 3Dprintedobjects- 12-month-oldinfants (N =18)- 6prime-testpairs- Head-mountedeyetracking

First-pickanalysis

Distance from prime

Prime

1 22

2 10

3 23

4 33

Touch-sequence cluster analysis

This work was supported by the ESRC International Centre for Language and Communicative Development (LuCiD), an ESRC Future Research Leaders fellowship to KT and a British Academy/Leverhulme Trust Senior Researcher Fellowship to GW. The support of the Economic and Social Research Council [ES/L008955/1; ES/N01703X/1] is gratefully acknowledged.

Again,firstpickshowedasystematicpattern. X2(3)=20.91,p=.004

Twomey,K.E.,&Westermann,G.(2017).Curiosity-basedlearningininfants:Aneurocomputationalapproach.DevelopmentalScience,(October2016),1–13.http://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12629

Kidd,C.,Piantadosi,S.T.,&Aslin,R.N.(2012).TheGoldilockseffect:Humaninfantsallocateattentiontovisualsequencesthatareneithertoosimplenortoocomplex.PLoSONE,7(5),1–8.http://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0036399

Prime:oneextremeshape,15s

Test:remainingfourobjects,30s

Look-sequenceclusteranalysis

Type1Type2

First-lookanalysis

Yesfirstlooksarenotrandomlydistributed!χ2(3)=10.30,p=.016

Infants’firstlooksaretoloworintermediatedistancestimuli

• Infantsfrom12monthsoldshowsystematicpatterns ofexploration.

• However,lookingandpickingexplorationshowsdifferentsystematicpatterns – willinfantsshowsimilarpatternsof

lookinginExperiment2asinExperiment1?• Exploratory stylesdonotdifferbetweenparticipants,so

whatdrivesthissystematicity?Prime?Sequencelength?Distance?

Distance from prime

First-lookSilent Label

1 0.32 0.35

2 0.38 0.32

3 0.14 0.16

4 0.14 0.16

Type1Type2

Type3

Infants’first pick aretohighest distancestimuli.

Acknowledgement

Head-mountedeyetrackingvideo