| Title |
The Goldilocks Effect: Human Infants Allocate Attention to Visual Sequences That Are Neither Too Simple Nor Too Complex
|
|---|---|
| Published in |
PLOS ONE, May 2012
|
| DOI | 10.1371/journal.pone.0036399 |
| Pubmed ID | |
| Authors |
Celeste Kidd, Steven T. Piantadosi, Richard N. Aslin |
| Abstract |
Human infants, like immature members of any species, must be highly selective in sampling information from their environment to learn efficiently. Failure to be selective would waste precious computational resources on material that is already known (too simple) or unknowable (too complex). In two experiments with 7- and 8-month-olds, we measure infants' visual attention to sequences of events varying in complexity, as determined by an ideal learner model. Infants' probability of looking away was greatest on stimulus items whose complexity (negative log probability) according to the model was either very low or very high. These results suggest a principle of infant attention that may have broad applicability: infants implicitly seek to maintain intermediate rates of information absorption and avoid wasting cognitive resources on overly simple or overly complex events. |
X Demographics
The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 37 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Geographical breakdown
| Country | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| United States | 12 | 32% |
| United Kingdom | 3 | 8% |
| Australia | 2 | 5% |
| Holy See (Vatican City State) | 1 | 3% |
| Germany | 1 | 3% |
| Netherlands | 1 | 3% |
| Norway | 1 | 3% |
| Unknown | 16 | 43% |
Demographic breakdown
| Type | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Members of the public | 27 | 73% |
| Scientists | 9 | 24% |
| Science communicators (journalists, bloggers, editors) | 1 | 3% |
Mendeley readers
The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 523 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.
Geographical breakdown
| Country | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| United States | 12 | 2% |
| Germany | 2 | <1% |
| France | 2 | <1% |
| Israel | 2 | <1% |
| Italy | 1 | <1% |
| Switzerland | 1 | <1% |
| Spain | 1 | <1% |
| Canada | 1 | <1% |
| Luxembourg | 1 | <1% |
| Other | 1 | <1% |
| Unknown | 499 | 95% |
Demographic breakdown
| Readers by professional status | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Student > Ph. D. Student | 161 | 31% |
| Researcher | 78 | 15% |
| Student > Master | 48 | 9% |
| Student > Bachelor | 48 | 9% |
| Student > Doctoral Student | 41 | 8% |
| Other | 78 | 15% |
| Unknown | 69 | 13% |
| Readers by discipline | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Psychology | 253 | 48% |
| Neuroscience | 33 | 6% |
| Linguistics | 29 | 6% |
| Computer Science | 20 | 4% |
| Agricultural and Biological Sciences | 18 | 3% |
| Other | 63 | 12% |
| Unknown | 107 | 20% |