Zhang, F. & Emberson, L. L.
Princeton University
Prediction, or the ability to use past experiences to generate expectations about future sensory input, has been shown to support cognitive development early in life. Specifically, research has shown that infants experience prediction error in the visual domain. Prediction error in the auditory domain, however, was not investigated. The goal of this current study is to compare the prediction error response for auditory and visual stimuli of 6 months old infants.
To study prediction error, we used eye-tracking to measure pupil diameter and design a gaze-contingent task. Pupil diameter has been shown to reflect cognitive surprise in infants, which is closely linked to prediction error. Furthermore, the gaze-contingent nature of the task allows the presentation of stimuli only when the infant is paying attention, which is especially important for a learning paradigm. ?
We designed a task to help infants learn two audio-visual association (A1V1, A2V2) and two visual-audio association (V3A3, V4A4). After learning, we violated their prediction by omitting the second stimulus in the pair. Therefore, comparing the pupil response in the present and omission trials, will allow us to see how pupil diameter (i.e. prediction error) changes as infants? predictions were unexpectedly being violated and if it depends on the domain it occurs in (i.e. visual versus auditory). Preliminary analysis of data from ten 6-month-old infants show that there might be a domain-specific prediction error response. Specifically, in the AV association, the pupil size for omission trials is larger than present trials, however, in the VA association, the pupil size for omission trials is very similar to present trials. Overall, preliminary data suggest that prediction errors are experienced in both the auditory and visual domain, but that it may be attenuated in the auditory domain.