Publications by Laraine McDonough

Mandler, J.M. & McDonough, L. (1995). Long-term recall of event sequences in infancy. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 59, 457-474.

The first experiment shows that 11-month-olds can encode novel causal events from a brief period of observational learning, and recall much of the information after 24 hours. The second experiment, using both a longitudinal and cross-sectional design, shows recall of the same events after a delay of 3 months. The infants remembered more individual actions than whole sequences, but reproduced many of the events in their entirety (and always in the correct order) after the long delay. Although they also reproduced arbitrarily ordered events immediately after being shown them at 11 months, they began to forget them after 24 hours and showed essentially no recall for this type of event after 3 months. The experiments not only indicate long-lasting memory for briefly experienced events in infancy, they also suggest that factors that organize recall at this young age are similar to those found in older children and adults.

McDonough, L. & Mandler, J.M. (1994). Very long-term recall in infants: Infantile amnesia reconsidered. Memory, 2, 339-352.

Subjects who had participated in a study on non-verbal recall before their first birthday returned to the laboratory one year later and were tested for recall of their previous visit. During their previous visit they had shown recall of both familiar and novel actions on a set of novel objects. However, after a year's delay, evidence for recall was found for the familiar actions only. One action in particular was responsible for this finding: feeding a teddy bear with a schematic bottle. The majority of the returning subjects who had been shown this action repeated it after a year, whereas none of the other returning subjects and few of the subjects in the control groups performed this action. The results indicate that young infants have the ability to recall an event both at 11 months of age and after a delay as long as one year. The finding that infants can recall during a period that later becomes inaccessible to memory is important to our understanding of infantile amnesia.

McDonough, L., Mandler, J.M., McKee, R. & Squire, L. (1995). The deferred imitation task as a nonverbal measure of declarative memory. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 92, 7580-7585.

We tested amnesic patients, patients with frontal lobe lesions, and control subjects with the deferred imitation task, a nonverbal test used to demonstrate memory abilities in human infants. One day 1, subjects were given sets of objects to obtain a baseline measure of their spontaneous performance of target actions. Then different event sequences were modeled with the object sets. On day 2, the objects were given to the subject again, first without any instructions to imitate the sequences, and then with explicit instructions to imitate the actions exactly as they had been modeled. Control subjects and frontal lobe patients reproduced the events under both uninstructed and instructed conditions. In contrast, performance by the amnesic patients did not significantly differ from that of a second control group who had the same opportunities to handle the objects but were not shown the modeled actions. These findings suggest that deferred imitation is dependent on the brain structures essential for declarative memory that are damaged in amnesia, and they support the view that infants who imitate actions after long delays have an early capacity for long-term declarative memory.

McDonough, L. (1999). Early declarative memory for location. British Journal of Developmental Psychology17, 381-402.

The abilities of 7.5-month-old infants to recall the location of hidden objects after delays averaging 90 seconds were investigated in three experiments. Various kinds of events were introduced during the delays in order to examine the stability of early location memory. Recall, as shown by reaching towards the correct location, was most clearly found when the infants were allowed either to remain seated facing the hiding locations (Expt 1) or were turned around and immediately re-seated (Expt 2) during the delays. In both experiments, the infants' attention was diverted from the hiding places, but during all or most of the delay the infants were facing the locations. Recall was dampened when infants were removed from the immediate location of the hiding and engaged in other activities such as looking at a picture during the delay (Expt 3). Further analyses indicated an effect for age that coincided with other research on location memory: evidence for recall was more clearly found for the older, but not the younger, 7-month-olds.

INDUCTIVE GENERALIZATION EXPERIMENTS

Mandler, J.M. & McDonough, L. (1996). Drinking and driving don't mix: Inductive generalization in infancy. Cognition, 59, 307-335.

The traditional view of inductive generalization in infancy is that it rests on perceptual similarity; infants are said to form perceptually based categories, such as dogs and cats, and then to associate various properties with them. Superordinate-level inductions, such as generalizations about animals as a domain, have been considered to be more abstract and assumed to be a later achievement. Three experiments were conducted to investigate these issues, using 14-month-olds as subjects. We modeled various properties or actions appropriate to animals or to vehicles and then assessed whether infants were willing to generalize their imitations of these actions to different exemplars from the same and different domains. Contrary to the traditional view, we found that infants this age have generalized the properties of drinking and sleeping throughout the animal domain, and the properties of "being keyed" and "giving a ride" throughout the vehicle domain. These generalizations are constrained solely by the boundaries of the domains themselves and are not influenced by the perceptual similarity of exemplars with the domains.

McDonough, L. & Mandler, J.M. (1998). Inductive generalization in 9- and 11-month-olds. Developmental Science 1:2, 227-232.

Using little models, we showed 9- and 11-month-old infants events in which animal or vehicle properties were demonstrated, such as a dog drinking from a cup or a car giving a ride. The infants were tested on imitation of these properties on the same exemplars used for modeling, on generalization to other exemplars from the same domain, and on generalization to exemplars from an inappropriate domain. Infants generalized the properties broadly to both typical and novel exemplars within the appropriate domain, and rarely to exemplars from the inappropriate domain. It is concluded that at least by 9 months infants have formed global concepts of animals and vehicles that control the way infants learn the characteristic properties of these classes.

Mandler, J.M. & McDonough, L. (1998). Studies in inductive inference in infancy. Cognitive Psychology, 37, 60-96.

Imitation of events was used to explore the inductive generalizations that 14-month-olds have made about animals, vehicles, and household artifacts. In Experiment 1 infants generalized domain-specific properties such as drinking to animals but not to vehicles, whereas they generalized domain-neutral properties such as going into a building to exemplars in both domains. The next four experiments showed that infants tend to interpret animal events very broadly, for example, construing a dog merely as a land animal rather than as a differentiated kind in its own right. Infants were somewhat more selective in their construals of vehicles. Experiment 6 showed that 14-month-olds also generalize "basic-level" properties very broadly. For example, they chose a pan to demonstrate drinking almost as often as a cup and fed a bone to a bird as often as to a dog. By 20 months, their selections narrowed appropriately for artifacts, but were still overgeneralized for natural kinds. The experiments indicate that infants tend to generalize their early experiences broadly across domains, often across exemplars that have a variety of different surface characteristics. The data suggest that it is the conceptual meaning of objects, rather than their physical features, that controls early associative learning.

Mandler, J.M. & McDonough, L. (2000). Advancing downward to the basic level. Journal of Cognition and Development, in press.

In three experiments we studied whether infants and young children understand various baisc-level conceptual distinctions in the domains of household artifacts, animals, and vehicles. Using little replicas, we modeled events such as washing dishes in a sink for children aged 14, 19, and 24 months, and then gave them an exemplar from the same basic-level concept (another sink) and an exemplar of another concept from the same domain (bathtub). We measured which object they used to imitate the event. Fourteen-month-olds did not differentiate among basic-level categories in any of these domains, for example, washing dishes in both a tub and a sink, and putting both a rabbit and a bird in a nest. By 19 months inappropriate behavior was greatly reduced for household artifacts and for vehicles, but not for animals. By 24 months performance was mainly appropriate for all three domains. It was also shown that although 14-month-olds are not making many conceptual distinctions at the basic-level, nevertheless they are beginning to make some broader conceptual distinctions among artifacts.

Mandler, J.M. & McDonough, L. (1993). Concept formation in Infancy. Cognitive Development, 8, 291-318.

Four experiments investigated conceptual categorization in 7- to 11-month-old infants. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that 9- and 11-month-olds differentiated the global domains of animals and vehicles. Within the animal domain no subcategorization was found: the infants did not differentiate dogs from fish or from rabbits. Within the vehicle domain infants differentiated cars from both airplanes and motorcycles. Experiment 3 showed similar, although weaker, categorization for 7-month-olds. Experiment 4 showed that categorization of animals and vehicles was unaffected by degree of between-category similarity. Birds and airplanes were treated as different even though the exemplars from both categories had similar shapes, including outstretched wings, and were of the same texture. These data, showing global differentiation of animals and vehicles, with lack of differentiation of "basic-level" categories within the animal domain, contrast with data from studies designed to assess perceptual categorization. Even younger infants differentiate various animal subcategories perceptually. However, the results presented here suggest that infants may not respond to such perceptual differences as being conceptually relevant.

Mandler, J.M. & McDonough, L. (1998). On developing a knowledge base in infancy. Developmental Psychology, 34, 1274-1288.

The development of conceptual categories from 7 to 11 months of age was explored in 5 experiments using an object-examination task. Infants in this age range categorized the global domains of animals, vehicles, and furniture. Plants and kitchen utensils were tested at 11 months, and these domains were also categorized. When 9-month-olds were tested on kitchen utensils, they did not categorize them. Subdivisions within the animal and furniture domains were also examined. Infants did not show any subcategorization of furniture. In the animal domain both 9- and 11-month-olds responded to the life-form distinction between dogs and birds, but they did not differentiate the mammal categories of dogs and cats until 11 months. This early organization of the conceptual system into global domains that become increasingly differentiated is discussed in relation to the adult conceptual system and its breakdown in semantic dementia.

LANGUAGE STUDIES

Goodman, J.C., McDonough, L., & Brown, N. (1998). The role of semantic context and memory in the acquisition of novel nouns. Child Development, 69, 1330-1344.

Three studies assessed the ability of 2-year-olds to use semantic context to infer the meanings of novel nouns and to retain those meanings a day later. In the first experiment, 24 2-year-olds heard novel nouns in sentences that contained semantically constraining verbs (e.g., "Mommy feeds the ferret."). They chose from a set of four novel object pictures to indicate the referent. Children learned a majority of the novel words. However, they occasionally failed to choose the correct object even when they understood the verb. Experiment 2 examined whether this was due to an inability to identify some of the pictures of novel objects. Experiment 3 tested 24 2-year-olds' memory for the newly learned nouns following a 24 hour delay and found significant retention. Results are discussed in terms of learning mechanisms that facilitate vocabulary acquisition in young children.

Choi, S., McDonough, L., Bowerman, M. & Mandler, J. (1999). Comprehension of spatial terms in English and Korean. Cognitive Development, 14, 241-268.

This study investigates young children's comprehension of spatial terms in two languages that categorize space strikingly differently. English makes a distinction between actions resulting in containment (put in) versus support or surface attachment (put on), while Korean makes a cross-cutting distinction between tight-fit relations (kkita) versus loose-fit or other contact relations (various verbs). In particular, the Korean verb kkita refers to actions resulting in a tight-fit relation regardless of containment or support. In a preferential looking study we assessed the comprehension of in by 20 English learners and kkita by 10 Korean learners, all between 18 and 23 months. The children viewed pairs of scenes while listening to sentences with and without the target word. The target word led children to gaze a different and language appropriate aspects of the scenes. We conclude that children are sensitive to language-specific spatial categories by 18-23 months.

McDonough, L. (2002). Basic-level nouns: first learned but misunderstood. Journal of Child Language, 29, 357-377.

It is commonly believed that first-learned words correspond with first-learned categories (both described as 'basic level') leading to the belief that language acquisition is a reasonably good indicator of early cognition. However, toddlers often overextended their first words. Do these errors reflect their comprehension? Two experiments were conducted in order to examine two-year- olds' production and comprehension of basic-level terms. The results showed overextensions in both production (e.g. children labeled a rocket 'airplane') and comprehension (e.g. they pointed to a rocket when airplane was requested). One reason toddlers extend labels to a wider conceptual domain is because they have not clearly differentiated basic-level concepts from related conceptual categories.

McDonough, L., Choi, S., & Mandler, J.M. (in press). Understanding spatial relations: Flexible infants, lexical adults. Cognitive Psychology.

Concepts of containment, support, and degree of fit were investigated using nonverbal, preferential-looking tasks with 9- to 14-month old infants and adults who were fluent in either English or Korean. Two contrasts were tested: tight containment vs. loose support (grammaticized as 'in' and 'on' in English by spatial prepositions and 'kkita' and 'nohta' in Korean by spatial verbs) and tight containment vs. loose containment (both grammaticized as 'in' in English but separately as 'kkita' and 'nehta' in Korean). Infants categorized both contrasts, suggesting conceptual readiness for learning such spatial semantics in either language. English-speaking adults categorized tight containment vs. loose support, but not tight vs. loose containment. However, Korean-speaking adults were successful at this latter contrast, which is lexicalized in their language. The adult data suggest that some spatial relations that are salient during the preverbal stage become less salient if language does not systematically encode them.

Rebotier, T.P., McDonough, L., & Kirsh, D.J. (in press). Image-dependent interaction of imagery and vision. American Journal of Psychology.

The influence of imagery on perception depends on the content of the mental image. 63 students responded to the location of the two hands of a clock, while visualizing the correct or an incorrect clock. Reaction Time is faster with valid cueing. Could this come from visual acquisition strategies such as planning visual saccades or shifting covert attention? No. In this study, a crucial control condition makes subjects look at rather than visualize the cue. Acquisition strategies should affect equally both types of cueing, but we observe that the effect of the visual cue is smaller and restricted to a particular sub-case where one expects visual acquisition strategies. Thus, what matters is the similarity of the content of the mental image with the visual scene. Besides this main finding, an interaction involving the hand used for responding adds support to theories that composite imagery is lateralized.

McDonough, L., Stahmer, A., Thompson. S. & Schreibman, L. (1997). Deficits, delays and distractions: An evaluation of symbolic play and memory in children with autism. Development and Psychopathology, 9, 17-41.

Two experiments wee conducted to evaluate symbolic-deficit and memory-deficit hypothesis to account for the cognitive problems seen in children with autism. Experiment 1 tested imitation, in immediate and deferred conditions, of familiar actions with different sets of objects representing the developmental progression from functional to symbolic play. The results showed that the autism group and both their receptive language and nonverbal IQ-matched controls imitated familiar actions with realistic objects (evidence for functional play) and placeholder objects (evidence for symbolic play) after delays ranging from 24 hours to 3 weeks. Experiment 2 tested familiar three-step event sequences in which a placeholder object was substituted for the second step in half the events. The results showed that the autism group remembered as many of the actions with the placeholder objects as the language-matched controls and as many correctly ordered sequences, a finding that supports a symbolic-delay (rather then deficit) hypothesis. These results were obtained in highly structured test situations and sharply contrast with the impairments seen in children with autism who are observed in naturalistic settings. Two interpretations of these findings are offered. First, structured test settings minimize distractions that typically occur in naturalistic settings that may interfere or disrupt symbolic play in children with autism. Second, the results are consistent with an executive function deficit in that the autistic group demonstrated more knowledge in test settings than they demonstrate spontaneously in naturalistic ones.