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    Neural mechanisms of infant learning: differences in frontal theta activity during object exploration modulate subsequent object recognition

    Begus, Katarina and Southgate, Victoria and Gliga, Teodora (2015) Neural mechanisms of infant learning: differences in frontal theta activity during object exploration modulate subsequent object recognition. Biology Letters 11 (5), p. 20150041. ISSN 1744-9561.

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    Abstract

    Investigating learning mechanisms in infancy relies largely on behavioural measures like visual attention, which often fail to predict whether stimuli would be encoded successfully. This study explored EEG activity in the theta frequency band, previously shown to predict successful learning in adults, to directly study infants' cognitive engagement, beyond visual attention. We tested 11-month-old infants (N = 23) and demonstrated that differences in frontal theta-band oscillations, recorded during infants' object exploration, predicted differential subsequent recognition of these objects in a preferential-looking test. Given that theta activity is modulated by motivation to learn in adults, these findings set the ground for future investigation into the drivers of infant learning.

    Metadata

    Item Type: Article
    Keyword(s) / Subject(s): theta oscillations, learning, infants, motivation
    School: Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Science > School of Psychological Sciences
    Research Centres and Institutes: Brain and Cognitive Development, Centre for (CBCD)
    Depositing User: Administrator
    Date Deposited: 02 Jun 2015 09:03
    Last Modified: 02 Aug 2023 17:16
    URI: https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/12297

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