About Us
Since 1995, our lab has been conducting research on the development of infant learning and memory in the first year of life. We seek to understand what type of information infants and children pick up from their environment, as well as how they organize this information into meaningful representations of objects and events. In order to complete our research, we rely on parents of infants who are kind enough to volunteer their time to participate.
Participating in this research helps advance the field of knowledge about infant memory and learning. We study 2.5-to 9-month-old infants, and we are always looking for new participants to take part in our studies. Our studies utilize the information we gather from infants’ looking preferences, since research has shown infants will look longer at something that is new or novel to them.
The studies begin with the parent holding the baby in their lap facing towards a computer screen. We show the baby images on this computer screen, usually two of the same image side by side, and the infant sees these images (of a shape, face, or body) over and over again while we track how often they look at the pictures. Once they start to look away (showing us the image is no longer new to them, or that they have “learned” the image), we show them two test images. One will be the same they saw previously, but the other will be slightly different, and the goal is to see if the infant is able to pick up on this difference. If the infant recognizes the difference between the old and the new image, it should look longer at the new image. By systematically changing the new image from the old one, we can then tell what aspects of the old image infants have learned.
The focus of our research is studying the development of visual cognition in the first year of life. Current studies examine the nature of the information that infants process in faces and bodies of people around them, how they learn to recognize and mentally organize humans and objects in their environment, and the neural processes underlying cognitive development. Our research is funded by grants from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Your participation will contribute to the advancement of science and the understanding of learning and memory processes in infancy. Moreover, this will be a fun experience for you and your infant!
Would you like to learn more? Call our office at (859) 257-6851 or email us at infantstudy@uky.edu
