#884 Maleen Thiele: Infant Social Learning
RECORDED ON SEPTEMBER 10th 2023.
Dr. Maleen Thiele is a Postdoc in the Department of Comparative Cultural Psychology at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, and group leader of the Minerva Fasttrack Group there. She is a developmental psychologist and infancy researcher interested in the psychological foundations of early social learning. In her current postdoc project, Dr. Thiele takes a comparative perspective studying the influence of observation-based social learning contexts on object-related memory across great ape species. A central methodological aim of the project is to develop robust eye-tracking paradigms and reproducible data processing approaches helping us to study ape cognition across species from infancy to adulthood.
In this episode, we talk about social learning in infants. We start by discussing how early in development we can study social learning, and how it can be studied in preverbal infants, including eye tracking. We talk about the importance of gaze following, and how it emerges. We discuss how infants pay attention to third party interactions, the role motivations play in what they pay attention to, and if these motivations are also shaped by social learning. We also discuss whether infants’ preference for social interactions increases with age. We talk about the role of eye contact in learning about objects. Finally, we talk about pedagogical forms of social learning.
Time Links:
Intro
How early in development can we study social learning in infancy?
How can it be studied in preverbal infants?
Gaze following, and how it emerges
Paying attention to third party interactions
Motivations
Does infants’ preference for social interactions increase with age?
The role of eye contact in learning about objects
Pedagogical forms of social learning
Follow Dr. Thiele’s work!
Follow Dr. Thiele’s work:
University page: https://bit.ly/3mIOmxP
ResearchGate profile: https://bit.ly/3L1YFq7
Twitter handle: @ThieleMaleen