Accounting for cognitive effort in a visual working memory task in 13- and 15-month old infants
Chen Cheng, Zsuzsa Kaldy, Erik Blaser
Developmental and Brain Sciences, University of Massachusetts Boston, Boston, MA
Results (behavioral)
Methods
Research question
Delayed Match Retrieval (aka ‘Memory Game’)
To what extent can cognitive effort (attention)
account for developmental increases in visual
working memory (VWM) performance?
Kaldy, Guillory, & Blaser,
2015, Dev Sci
Training trials
Background & Goal
Test trials
Fly-in
1s
VWM performance increases over development, but it is
not clear how much of this is caused by an increase in
memory capacity per se, as opposed to increases in
cognitive control and task engagement.
Fly-in
1s
Encoding
1s each
Sample &
response
1s or 4s
Encoding
1s each
Sample appears
1s
Reward
The task-evoked pupil response
reflects the 'intensive aspect' of
attention (Kahneman, 1973; Laeng
et al, 2012). This is true for infants
and children too, e.g. Blaser et al.,
(2012) showed that 2-year-olds with
greater pupil responses performed
better in a visual search task.
Dependent variable: Proportion
of first look (or longer look)
to Match vs. Non-match card
Match
encoding
Participants
Video Coding
Video Coding Interface
Three coders tracked infants’ behavior
(blinded; without viewing eye trace or
trial) and noted disengagement due to:
external distraction, social referencing,
and internal factors (fussiness).
0.4"
0.3"
0.2"
0.1"
0"
NonMatch
Reward
time
Summary & Future directions
Cognitive effort (as measured by pupil response)
influenced VWM performance in both age groups.
Pupil dilation during trials with correct or
incorrect responses (based on first look)
encoding
Old"
Video coding results:
Preliminary data (N=16)
showed no correlation
between task performance
and overall engagement in
two age groups.
Performance as a function of pupil dilation
response
response
pupil dilation (mm)
T120 Tobii Eye Tracker
0.5"
Age)Group
Results (Pupil)
younger
Younger: 13-14.1 months (N=13);
Older: 14.5-16.5 months (N=14). Only
infants who completed 3 or more
testing trials were analyzed.
0.6"
15 month-olds had better performance in a
Delayed Match Retrieval visual working memory
task, compared with 13 month-olds.
proportion first looks to Match
Participants & Video Coding
Crit
for ical pe
riod
anti
c
sac ipator
cad
y
es
Sample
pupil dilation (mm)
Through pupillometric measures and behavioral
coding of task engagement during a visual
working memory task*, we sought to account for
the role of cognitive effort and task engagement.
0.7"
Young"
Response
3s
Blaser et al., 2012
Overall, older children
significantly outperformed
younger based on both first
look (F(1,26)=7.16, p =.
013) and longer look
(F(1,26) =5.2, p = .031).
0.8"
proportion
first looks to Match
Percentage)of)Performance
HUMAN
VISION LAB
Encoding
younger
Response
younger
Encoding
older
Response
older
quantiled pupil dilation (mm)
older
Interestingly, while the effort expended by older
infants advantageously boosted performance, in
younger infants it negatively affected performance.
Pupil response trends during encoding (r=0.15, p =
0.27) and response (r=0.2, p=0.12) showed a positive
correlation with performance in the older group, but a
negative relationship (encoding: r=-0.28, p=0.08;
response: r=-0.22, p=0.18) in younger group.
It may be that some of the younger infants were
performing a different task (delayed non-match
retrieval?) in spite of training. We are currently
investigating this possibility.
Acknowledgement & Reference
This project was supported by NIH #1R15HD086658 and Grant #319294 from the Simons
Foundation under the auspices of the Simons Center for the Social Brain at MIT.
Blaser, E., Eglington, L., Carter, A. S., & Kaldy, Z. (2014). Pupillometry reveals a mechanism
for the Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) advantage in visual tasks. Scientific reports, 4.
Kahneman, D. (1973). Attention and effort (p. 246). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Kaldy, Z., Guillory, S. B., & Blaser, E. (2015). Delayed Match Retrieval: a novel anticipation‐
based visual working memory paradigm. Developmental science.
Laeng, B., Sirois, S., & Gredebäck, G. (2012). Pupillometry a window to the preconscious?
Perspectives on psychological science, 7(1), 18-27.
For more info, please contact ([email protected]); or ([email protected]).