Publication Type: Individual Poster
Abstract: Background and Aims: The majority of our knowledge about early memory development comes from preferential-looking paradigms, in which memory is inferred from infants’ tendency to look longer at novel compared to familiar stimuli (i.e., novelty preferences). One view holds that novelty preferences reflect a form of explicit memory. Another possibility is that novelty preferences reflect the effects of repetition suppression for familiar stimuli on visual attention, a form of implicit memory. We investigated the neural mechanisms underlying infant memory by examining the effects of repetition of familiar and novel stimuli on infants’ brain responses.

Methods: Six-month-old infants passively viewed pictures of familiar and novel objects while event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded from 64 electrodes distributed evenly across the scalp. Twenty-four unique familiar pictures of items from the infant’s home environment (e.g., toys, pets, furniture), and 24 unique novel pictures of items from another infant’s home environment, were each presented twice in immediate repetition.

Key Results: Preliminary analyses (n=22) focused on the negative-central (Nc), a fronto-central component that peaks between 400 and 800 ms post-stimulus, and the N700, a negative occipital component that peaks between 600 and 800 ms post-stimulus. Peak amplitude and latency measures were submitted to separate 2 x 2 x 3 repeated measures ANOVAs with Greenhouse-Geiser correction with factors condition (familiar, novel), repetition (1st, 2nd), and region (left, mid, right). There was a main effect of condition for the amplitude of the Nc (p < .01); the Nc was more negative to familiar than to novel pictures. Condition x repetition interactions were significant for latency of the Nc (p<.01, shorter latency for repetition of familiar but not novel pictures), and peak amplitude of the N700 (p<.05, decreased amplitude for second presentation of familiar but not novel pictures).

Conclusions: Infants demonstrated a greater attentional response to familiar pictures than to novel pictures, as evidenced by increased amplitude of the Nc to familiar pictures. In addition, condition x repetition interactions for the Nc and N700 indicate that infants processed the familiar pictures faster (as evidenced by shorter latencies) and more efficiently (as evidenced by decreases in amplitude) the second time they were presented. In contrast, there were no repetition effects for novel stimuli. The reduction in activation to repetitions of familiar items observed here is consistent with neuro-imaging studies of implicit memory in adults, suggesting that memory at this point in development may still be primarily perceptually based.

Publication Type: Invited Paper

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: What are the purposes and benefits of majoring in international studies? In this paper, we investigate how international studies major programs at primarily undergraduate colleges and universities in the Midwest market themselves. Hence, this is not a survey of the actual course of study prescribed by various institutions, but rather an examination of the way international studies programs identify their purpose and benefits in an effort to attract students to the major. We find that there is quite a bit of variation in the benefits that are highlighted. However, knowledge, career preparation, and foreign language study are cited most frequently, irrespective of the degree to which the program is structured.

Publication Type: Invited Paper