Infancy and Early Development

Foetal and Newborn Learning Laboratory

Dr K Dunn in collaboration with Professor Vincent Reid, Waikato University, NZ

Our team investigates understanding of the visual and auditory world in utero. Extensive work has been conducted into postnatal cognitive development from birth but very little is known about how perception and cognition might develop before this point. For example, newborn infants have a visual preference for face-like stimuli, can discriminate between small sets of numbers and can match mouth movements to simple speech sounds. Our work examines whether infants develop these preferences and capacities before birth or if they learn these quickly once exposed to the post-natal environment.

We use low levels of light to present images to the late-term fetus and use the latest 4D scanning technology to measure detailed facial behaviour in response to visual and auditory stimuli. We then compare responses to the same shapes and sounds after birth. This will help us to understand more about how learning takes place and how infants understand other people during very early development.

This grant is currently funded by the Leverhulme Trust.

Language and Communicative Development

Professor Padraic Monaghan

We explore how children learn language from what they see and hear around them; and integrate evidence from behavioural studies, measures of brain activity and computational models to understand how children learn a language in their first five years of life. We also investigate how language delay may occur in young children and explore whether differences between children and differences in their environments affect how they learn to talk. An additional strand of research investigates how sleep affects learning, in children and adults, and how sleep disorders might impact on language acquisition. Our research is funded by an ESRC Research Centre, in collaboration with researchers at Liverpool and Manchester Universities.

Developmental Cognitive Science Lab

Professor Gert Westermann

Research in the Developmental Cognitive Science lab is concerned with the development of knowledge in infants and young children and the factors that shape individual learning trajectories. We study how infants learn about objects, categories and social partners in their environment, and how beginning language abilities contribute to and shape this learning. A focus in our work is on curiosity-based learning: how do infants and toddlers explore their environment actively, and how does such active exploration differ in learning outcomes from passive exposure to information? We investigate how curiosity can be measured in infants, older children, and adults, what kinds of information elicits curiosity, if expression and manifestation of curiosity varies across cultures, and how we can characterize individual differences in curiosity-based learning. Insights into these questions will enable us to support children by providing environments that foster curiosity and active learning in pre-school and school settings.

In our work, we use eye tracking (including measures of pupil dilation), EEG, computational modelling, behavioural studies and surveys. Our research is funded by the ESRC LuCiD Centre in collaboration with researchers at the University of Manchester and the University of Liverpool.

Autism Lab

Dr Calum Hartley

Our research investigates how autism influences three aspects, including word learning, symbolic understanding of pictures, and ownership. Word learning investigates how autistic children learn new words and aims to identify environmental conditions to facilitate their learning. Research into the symbolic understanding of pictures investigates autistic children’s understanding of how pictures relate to the world and how their comprehension is influenced. Ownership investigates how ownership biases children’s preferences and valuations for objects, how they identify “who owns what”, their understanding of ownership rights, and they share owned resource.

Active Learning Lab

Dr Marina Bazhydai

Research at the Active Learning Lab (ALL) broadly concerns development of knowledge acquisition, transformation and transmission in active social learning. We study active information-seeking and information-giving, curiosity, play and creativity across development. These distinct but connected lines of research allow us to better understand how, from very early on, infants effectively learn about the world through both active inquiry skills and reliance on information supplied by others. Equipped with these competing strategies, not only do children seek new information, but they are also able to creatively modify and transform it, as well as teach others about what they learned or created. We are thus interested in understanding the relations between curiosity, creativity and social knowledge exchange. We use behavioural, eye-tracking and physiological experimental methods, as well as naturalistic observation and surveys, and study a range of age groups, from infants in their first year of life to children in formal school settings. With these lines of research, we also aspire to contribute to transforming educational practices through developing evidence-based pedagogical recommendations.