New Approaches to Infant Learning and Cognition

Duke University, Durham NC

Investigators

Abstract

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The overarching goal of this meeting is to bring together researchers from diverse areas in the study of infant learning and infant cognition in order to move toward a more general understanding of the role of learning in infant cognitive development. Much of recent work on infant cognition has focused on what infants seem to know at different points in development, but has spent less time investigating questions of how this knowledge develops. Recent work on infant learning across a number of domains offers a vantage point from which to address this gap, and thereby address a number of unresolved issues concerning the nature of the infant mind, including the underlying mechanisms of learning and the creation of conceptual structures. Leading researchers in the following areas of study will be invited to participate in this conference: Learning about Objects and Actions, Language Learning, Category Learning, Social Learning, and Processes Supporting Learning. A group of about ten high-profile younger researchers will be invited to give talks featuring how learning and cognition come together in their own work. These talks will be discussed and synthesized by a group of five senior discussants. The objectives are to provide all of the participants with examples of connections between learning cognition that they can then apply to their own research. A new synthesis of infant cognition that focuses on learning will push the field past the outdated notions of "nativism or nothing" that currently pervade researchers' thinking about the origins of cognition.