Research in the Developmental Science Lab focuses
on the learning and development of several related skills, including
perception, memory, and attention. In particular, a number of projects
are
currently investigating how humans acquire the ability to think about
(e.g.,
remember,
imagine, search for, etc.) hidden or occluded objects. There are
three major areas of work:
- Object representation in infants: How do infants
learn to remember or look for objects that have moved out of
sight? One of the ways that we are investigating this question
is by studying how infants track the
motion
of a car
that passes behind a screen. The figure
below illustrates a computer model that simulates infants' eye
movements during this task.
- Neural network models of visual attention: in
collaboration with Dima
Amso (Cornell University) and Scott
Johnson (UCLA), we are also studying the strategies
that infants develop as they scan the visual world. The two figures
below illustrate
examples of how one of our models simulates infants' eye movements.
- Multitasking and divided attention: a third
project is investigating how adults learn to divide their attention
across several simultaneous tasks. This study is designed to
help us understand the limits of multitasking, and how the average
person performs when doing several things at once (e.g., driving
while talking on a cell phone).
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