Learning in Infancy Is Active, Endogenously Motivated, and Depends on the Prefrontal Cortices
Name
AR_DevPsy_2020_psyarxiv.pdf
Description
Submitted version
Size
3.61 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
53e5bafe7fe0d09b399908785ae0a679
Author(s)
Raz, Gal
Saxe, Rebecca
Date Issued
2020
Journal
Annual Review of Developmental Psychology
Publisher
Annual Reviews
Citation
Raz, Gal and Saxe, Rebecca. 2020. "Learning in Infancy Is Active, Endogenously Motivated, and Depends on the Prefrontal Cortices." Annual Review of Developmental Psychology, 2 (1).
Version
Original manuscript
Abstract
A common view of learning in infancy emphasizes the role of incidental sensory experiences from which increasingly abstract statistical regularities are extracted. In this view, infant brains initially support basic sensory and motor functions, followed by maturation of higher-level association cortex. Here, we critique this view and posit that, by contrast and more like adults, infants are active, endogenously motivated learners who structure their own learning through flexible selection of attentional targets and active interventions on their environment. We further argue that the infant brain, and particularly the prefrontal cortex (PFC), is well equipped to support these learning behaviors. We review recent progress in characterizing the function of the infant PFC, which suggests that, as in adults, the PFC is functionally specialized and highly connected. Together, we present an integrative account of infant minds and brains, in which the infant PFC represents multiple intrinsic motivations, which are leveraged for active learning.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences
McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1146/ANNUREV-DEVPSYCH-121318-084841
