Invited Talk University Calabria, Italy February 4, 2009
Not too long ago, human infants were considered to be deaf, blind, and passive. With the advent of new paradigms to test their social and cognitive capacities, infants told us that this conclusion was wrong. Before they can crawl, point to toys, or pronounce their first words, young infants achieve some of the most complex of human social-cognitive skills. In recent years, we listened to what several thousand infants had to tell us about their ability to detect and process people, objects, and social events. In this talk, I will review some of our findings.
The study of infancy does more than highlight a range of early competencies and milestones. Infants tell us about the measures that we need to take to detect developmental disorders such as autism. Preverbal infants inform us how to intervene when communication skills are limited and how to create better techniques to facilitate learning. Some of our recent discoveries led us to develop and implement more sensitive measures to assess how the young brain processes information. We found that the typically developing infant brain selectively processes social cues such as eye contact and tone of voice and uses these cues to learn. Infants gave us this information without offering words, movements, or facial expressions. These findings provide the groundwork for the vital discovery of even more innovative methods. Inspired by infants, I will discuss how new methods can aid in early detection and intervention of autism.
