Publication Type: Individual Paper
Abstract: An interdisciplinary approach was critical while reconstructing the cultural history of an urban-resort community and my focus centered on research methods in social history, urban sociology, cultural anthropology, and oral history. Fundamentally, my thesis examined and expanded the historical discourse on Atlantic City, New Jersey within the context of exploring innovative approaches for the purpose of furthering the field of urban-resort history. This inquiry revealed and illuminated African American property-owners and broadened our perspective of pioneering entrepreneurs during the era when the city was known as “the playground of the world.” In general, early Atlantic City historians either completely ignored or abbreviated the African-American presence whether permanent residents, seasonal workers, day-excursionists, or summer vacationers. My findings show that a matrix of relationships ultimately structured the cultural values and traditional patterns of behavior among early Black resort dwellers. My analysis tested methods for examining the cultural and historical impact on the day-to-day community life of blacks within the context of an urban-resort environment and revealed how cultural formations are influenced by “place.”

Historically, Atlantic City underwent rapid growth and development during the first three decades of the 20th century and the concept of an urban-resort emerged that would allow for the maximum utilization of all available space. Despite its relatively diminutive size, Atlantic City is one of the few areas in the United States where African Americans in any substantial numbers lived on or near the oceanfront for over 150 years. My findings produced both a statistical perspective and comprehensive demographic profiles of this population that contributes to the field of migration studies, and to genealogy and local history studies in relation to African American history. My empirical data is based on federal manuscript census records from 1850 to 1900 resulting in the identification of over 3,200 African Americans residing in Atlantic City, or over twenty percent (20%) of the resort’s total population by the turn-of-the-20th-century. This work’s relevance exemplifies cross-disciplinary research and reflects the values of interdisciplinary methods while filling voids in African American History and Culture.

Publication Type: Individual Poster
Abstract: Background & Aims: Perceptual experience plays an important role in the way that adults perceive the world around them. For example, Zemel et al. (2002) demonstrated that when adults are given brief exposure to novel, odd shapes, they subsequently link the visible fragments of a partly occluded object in a way that is consistent with the novel shape, even when this interpretation violates the typical perceptual grouping principles that govern adult perception. In this study, we investigate whether infants’ early experiences with certain object categories can impact their perceptual interpretation of partly occluded displays, specifically when generic perceptual grouping principles are in conflict with infants’ conceptual knowledge about the object in the display.

Methods: We investigated infants’ perception of a novel object from a category that is familiar to young infants: key rings. In our first experiment, we presented 8.5-month-old infants with a partially occluded key ring display in which the keys and ring moved together as one rigid unit (Move-together event) or the ring moved but the keys remained stationary throughout the event (Move-apart event). Based on previous research, our rationale was that infants would look longer at the event that violated their interpretation of the display as one connected unit or two separate units. Next, we performed parallel experiments with 8.5-month-old infants using modified key ring displays in which we removed the distinctive features of the keys and/or ring. In one experiment, we covered the individual keys in the display with a striped box and, in another experiment, we covered the ring with a spotted circle. Lastly, we tested 7-month-old infants with the standard key ring display to determine whether younger infants interpret the visible portions of the key ring using generic object parsing principles instead of object knowledge.

Results: 8.5-month-old infants perceived the keys and ring as connected despite their attribute differences, and their perception of object unity diminished as the distinctive attributes of the key ring were removed. When all of the distinctive attributes of the key ring were removed, the 8.5-month-old infants perceived the display as two separate objects, which is how younger infants (7-month-olds) perceived the key ring display with all its distinctive attributes unaltered.

Conclusion: On the basis of typical experience with an object category, infants expect novel exemplars of that category to possess category-typical attributes. Further, by 8.5 months of age, infants rely on perceptual experience to interpret visual scenes when their object knowledge conflicts with generic perceptual grouping principles.

Publication Type: Individual Poster
Abstract: Background and Aims: Research using imitation procedures show that younger children can imitate a live model only when the conditions at encoding and testing match, whereas older children can imitate even with changes to the conditions at testing. Whether this developmental pattern is also true of information conveyed using media, such as picture books, has yet to be explored. An immediate imitation procedure was thus used to investigate whether 18- and 24-month-olds (N=120) can generalize information learned from a picture book reading interaction to novel stimuli and contexts.

Methods: The experimenter read each participant a short picture book that depicted a child constructing a rattle in a three-step action sequence. The participant was then given the opportunity to re-enact the sequence. The children were either tested: 1) in the same room with the same stimuli (no change); 2) in a different room with the same stimuli (context change); 3) in the same room with different stimuli (stimuli change). The performance of these children was compared to age-matched controls that never saw the picture book but were allowed to construct the rattle.

Key Results: The mean number of target actions (0-3) the children produced was subjected to one-way ANOVAs across condition at each age with post-hoc SNK tests. The performance of the 24-month-old children in experimental groups (no change, stimuli change, and context change) did not differ and they produced more target acts than did the children in the control condition, F(3, 44) = 5.34, p < .005). The performance of the 18-month-old children in the no change condition produced more target actions than the children in the control condition, F(3, 48) = 3.34, p < .05. The performance of the children in the stimuli and context change conditions, however, was intermediate between the control and no change conditions.

Conclusions: Consistent with imitation studies showing generalization from a live model, there are also age-related changes in children’s ability to generalize from the contents of a picture book to novel situations. The 18-month-old children imitated only when the test conditions were similar to those at encoding (no change); however performance was disrupted with changes to the test context or stimuli. In contrast, 24-month-old children successfully imitated even with changes to the test context or stimuli. These data suggest that not only can young children learn from a symbolic medium but they can also generalize to different test conditions.

Publication Type: Individual Poster
Abstract: Background and Aims: Do infants attend to discrete quantity information? Studies showing that they do often fail to control properly for continuous variables (Clearfield and Mix, 1999). More recent studies suggest that infants ignore discrete quantity information except when continuous quantity information is inaccessible (Feigenson, 2003). However, when continuous and discrete quantities are equally good sources of information, which do infants choose? A previous study pitting discrete and continuous variables against each other found that twelve-month-olds do track discrete properties of sets of objects through occlusion (Chen and Leslie, 2004). Here, we investigate whether even younger children do so as well.

Experiment 1
Methods: We utilized Kaldy and Leslie’s (2003) two-screen method. 8-10 month-old infants were familiarized to three sequentially-placed discs with a radius of 1.414” (R1.414); the second and third disc were grouped together. The discs were then moved to the sides of the stage in groups of one and two. Side of group placement alternated during familiarizations so that infants did not associate one side with one particular group. During test trials, two screens were placed on the stage and the three discs presented as during habituation trials. The discs were then moved behind the screens and the two-group screen lifted. In a between-subjects design, infants saw one of four outcomes; outcomes varied by number or area. In the Control condition, infants saw two R1.414 discs. In the Expected Number, Unexpected Area condition, infants saw two R1.155 discs. In the Unexpected Familiar Number condition, infants saw three R1.15 discs. This numerical outcome was considered “familiar” because it contained the same total number of items to which infants were familiarized. In the Unexpected Unfamiliar Number condition, infants saw one R2 disc. The total area of the discs in both Unexpected Number conditions equaled that of the two R1.155 discs.
Key Results: Data collection is ongoing, but preliminary analyses suggest that, like 12-month-old infants, 9-month-olds look longer at changes in number when area remained constant, but not at changes in area when number remained constant. Consistent with previous studies using the 2-screen method with 9-month-olds, the strongest effect is seen not on the 1st test trial, but on later trials, suggesting that 9-month-olds require more exposure to test displays in order to notice changes when side of placement alternates (Kaldy and Leslie, 2003).

Conclusions: 9-month-olds may attend to discrete quantity information and can use this information to track sets of objects.

Parts of this research have previously been presented at the ESRC Object Symposium 2005.

Publication Type: Individual Poster
Abstract: Background and Aims: Infants prefer native over non-native language sounds that include rhythm, intonation, stress patterns, and phonemes. Clearly, infants become familiarized with their native language through experience with caretakers and others. However, native language learning occurs in spite of considerable intra- and inter-speaker variability. One example of variance is speech accent; within-language differences in production of consonants and vowels that do not alter their native status. American infants discriminate American- from British-English, but it remains unclear whether infants categorize unfamiliar accents as native, or non-native speech. We examined American and Australian infants’ preferences for natural recordings of American (AM) and Australian (AU) female infant-directed speech (IDS).
Method: A serial preference procedure (infant-controlled) was used, with 12 presentations of a visual target associated with either AM or AU, counterbalanced for order. Sample sizes and ages were: Exp 1 (20(AM) and 20(AU) 6-mo-olds); Exp 2 (17(AM) 6-mo-olds); Exp 3 (20(AM) 8-mo-olds). Looking time and heart rate (HR) were measured as attention indices; we predicted longer looking times and greater HR decelerations to native vs. non-native accents (HR results are currently available for the American samples only).
Key Results: Experiment 1: AM 6-mo-olds looked significantly longer and showed greater HR decelerations to AU; AU 6-mo-olds looked significantly longer to AM, but only when presented first. No significant preference was seen in this sample when AU was first. Experiment 2: AM 6-mo-olds showed no accent preference (in either looking or HR measures) when the natural recordings were low-pass filtered. Experiment 3: AM 8-mo-olds showed no preference, although looking and HR decelerations both tended to be greater to AU when presented first (p < .07); when data from first trials were removed, this effect disappeared.
Conclusions: Contrary to our predictions, 6-mo-olds generally attend more to non-native accents. Non-native accent preference is not attributable to differences in pitch or intonation patterns because no preference was seen with filtered speech. Interestingly, this non-native accent preference was considerably reduced in 8-mo-olds, although no native accent preference was evident. Both age groups appear to perceive accents as novel productions of their native phonemes, rather than as non-native languages, but increase attention to phonemic novelty only at younger ages, perhaps reflecting perceptual attunement to native language information in the older infants.