HKU studies link between babies' learning abilities and future development
HKU researchers are testing babies to see how human perceptual and cognitive abilities develop. But getting them to co-operate can be a challenge, writes Jeanette Wang
Inside a laboratory at University of Hong Kong's psychology department, an infant sits in front of a computer screen and is shown an animated sequence: a smiley face accompanied by laughter, the smiley face again with the same laughter, and finally a sad face accompanied by crying. After all three faces appear in a row, the screen goes blank and the sequence is repeated.
The screen has a special built-in eye motion tracker to follow the viewer's gaze. Through tests infants, the researchers have found that typically after the sequence is repeated nine times, an infant's attention is cut by half.
"This means the infant has learned the sequence and is bored," says researcher and assistant professor Tseng Chia-huei, an expert in the fields of perceptual learning and visual attention.
"We then show a different sequence - maybe a smiley face, a sad face, then a smiley face - and see if the infant's looking time is restored."
But some infants continue to be amused by the old sequence beyond nine times. Tseng says this indicates the infant is slower in grasping the pattern.
Testing for such rule learning ability in infants is just one of the many studies being done at HKU's Baby Scientist Programme. Started in 2010, it has since recruited more than 600 Hong Kong families with babies aged up to 12 months to help researchers understand how human perceptual and cognitive abilities develop and mature.