Infants Are Able to Learn Abstract Rules Visually

Three-month-old babies cannot sit up or roll over, yet they are already capable of learning patterns from simply looking at the world around them, according to a recent Northwestern University study.

Infants are able to learn abstract rules visually. Image credit: tasnimnews.com (CC BY 4.0)

Throughout the animal kingdom, being able to detect not only objects and events, but also the relations among them, is key to survival. Among humans, this capacity is exceptionally abstract. When we learn a rule or pattern in one domain, such as an alternating pattern of lights, we readily abstract this pattern and apply it to another domain -- for example, an alternating pattern of sounds.

This ability, known as "abstract rule learning," is a signature of human perception and cognition. What we do not know is how early it develops.

Prior research documented that 4-month-old infants successfully abstract rules from speech sounds and tone sequences, but failed to abstract rules in the visual domain, such as from patterns of objects. This presented a puzzle: Why were infants successful at detecting abstract patterns from the sounds that they heard, but not from the objects they saw?

The researchers showed 40 infants patterned sequences of different kinds of dogs. For example, infants learning an "ABA" pattern might see a picture of an Alaskan malamute (A) followed by a picture of a German shepherd (B), and finally another Alaskan malamute (A).

Then, the researchers presented infants with two new sequences with new kinds of dogs that the infants had not yet seen. The elements in each sequence were identical -- only the pattern in which they were presented differed. One sequence followed the same ABA pattern (terrier, setter, terrier); the other followed a new AAB pattern (terrier, terrier, setter).

Although the elements in the AAB and ABA sequences were identical, infants noticed the different patterns. This documents infants' ability to learn abstract rules visually.

The study results indicate that infants are learning such abstract rules through seeing from a very early age. Babies are doing really powerful abstraction from just their observation of the world. (Tasnim News Agency)

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