Denis Mareschal
Biographic Data
| ID | 1463539 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Denis Mareschal |
| GIVEN NAMES | Denis |
| FAMILY NAME | Mareschal |
| SIGNATURE | MARESCHAL D |
| AFFILIATIONS | Birkbeck, University of London |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9828-9548 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 2 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 20 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2000 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2022 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Learning in Noisy Classrooms
Classrooms are noisy, yet little is known about pupils’ subjective reactions to noise. We surveyed 112 children between 8.70 and 11.38 years of age and extracted five dimensions in their reactions to noise by factorial analyses: (1) perceived classroom loudness, (2) hearing difficulties, (3) attention capture, (4) interference, (5) annoyance from noise. Structural Equation Models were run to better understand interindividual differences in noise …
Left, right, left, right
This study investigated toddlers' ability to control simple alternating pattern actions, and how this relates to motor competence and executive functions. 70 toddlers between 24 and 36 months of age were instructed to sort coins in an alternating pattern into two boxes; left, right, left, right etc. Executive functions and memory competence performance were assessed in additional small games. The results showed that the ability to plan and execut…
Children’s Effortful Control Skills, but Not Their Prosocial Skills, Relate to Their Reactions to Classroom Noise
Environmental noise is one of the main sources of pollution in today's modern world. Health effects associated with noise depend on both environmental exposure and individuals' noise sensitivity. However, still little is known as to why some children are more noise sensitive than others. Studies to date have focused on adult populations and have not considered both cognitive and personality factors when explaining noise sensitivity. The current r…
Capturing touch in parent–infant interaction
Naturally occurring high levels of caregiver touch promote offspring development in many animal species. Yet, caregiver touch remains a relatively understudied topic in human development, possibly due to challenges of measuring this means of interaction. While parental reports (e.g., questionnaires, diaries) are easy to collect, they may be subject to biases and memory limitations. In contrast, observing touch in a short session of parent–child i…
Does surprise enhance infant memory? Assessing the impact of the encoding context on subsequent object recognition
A discrepancy between what was predicted and what is observed has been linked to increased looking times, changes in brain electrical activity, and increased pupil dilation in infants. These processes associated with heightened attention and readiness to learn might enhance the encoding and memory consolidation of the surprising object, as suggested by both the infant and the adult literature. We therefore investigated whether the presence of sur…
Are two cues always better than one? The role of multiple intra-sensory cues compared to multi-cross-sensory cues in children's incidental category learning
Do cues from multiple modalities support quicker learning in primary schoolchildren
The current study investigates whether informative, mutually redundant audiovisual cues support better performance in a category learning paradigm. Research suggests that, under some conditions, redundant multisensory cues supports better learning, when compared with unisensory cues. This was examined systematically across two experiments. In Experiment 1, children aged 5, 7, and 10 years were allocated to 1 of the 3 "modality" conditions (audio …
Incidental category learning and cognitive load in a multisensory environment across childhood
Multisensory information has been shown to facilitate learning (Bahrick & Lickliter, 2000; Broadbent, White, Mareschal, & Kirkham, 2017; Jordan & Baker, 2011; Shams & Seitz, 2008). However, although research has examined the modulating effect of unisensory and multisensory distractors on multisensory processing, the extent to which a concurrent unisensory or multisensory cognitive load task would interfere with or support multisensory learning re…
Getting into the Groove
Despite good early rhythm processing abilities, and clear enjoyment of music, infants appear not to be able to spontaneously synchronize their movement to the beat of a song (Zentner and Eerola, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107, 2010, 5768). We present a new social bell‐ringing task designed to facilitate synchronous movement to music in infants. Ten‐month‐olds, 18‐month‐olds, and adults were played musical tracks of various t…
Are you looking at me?” How children’s gaze judgments improve with age
Adults' judgments of another person's gaze reflect both sensory (e.g., perceptual) and nonsensory (e.g., decisional) processes. We examined how children's performance on a gaze categorization task develops over time by varying uncertainty in the stimulus presented to 6- to 11- year-olds (n = 57). We found that younger children responded "direct" over a wider range of gaze deviations. We also found that increasing uncertainty led to an increase in…
Mapping the origins of time
Time is central to any understanding of the world. In adults, estimation errors grow linearly with the length of the interval, much faster than would be expected of a clock-like mechanism. Here we present the first direct demonstration that this is also true in human infants. Using an eye-tracking paradigm, we examined 4-, 6-, 10-, and 14-month-olds' responses to the omission of a recurring target, on either a 3- or 5-s cycle. At all ages (a) bot…
Attention to Multiple Cues During Spontaneous Object Labeling
It is well established that 2-year-olds attribute a novel label to an object's global shape rather than local features (i.e., parts). Although recent studies have found that younger infants also attend to global rather than local features when given a label, the test stimuli in these experiments confounded parts and shape by varying both or neither. With infants (16- and 24-month-olds) and adults, this experiment disentangled shape and parts with…
The Role of Context in the Categorization of Hybrid Toy Stimuli by 18‐Month‐Olds
Using a sequential touching procedure, we examined whether 18‐month‐olds could use different categorization strategies adaptively as a function of context. Infants were presented with test toys of land animals (quadrupeds), cars, and hybrids made by recombining car parts with animal parts. Infants who experienced a context emphasizing a taxonomic divide were subsequently more likely to form categories that reflected a taxonomic divide, whereas in…
From Parts to Wholes
Visual object processing in infancy is often described as proceeding from an early stage in which object features are processed independently to a later stage in which relations between features are taken into account (e.g., Cohen, 1998). Here we present the Representational Acuity Hypothesis, which argues that this behavioral shift can be explained by a developmental decrease in the size of neural receptive fields in the cortical areas responsib…
Metaphor as Categorization
Metaphor as Categorization
A key issue for models of metaphor comprehension is to explain how, in some metaphorical comparison "A is B," only some features of B are transferred to A. The features of B that are transferred to A depend both on A and on B. This is the central thrust of Black's (1979) well-known interaction theory of metaphor comprehension. However, this theory is somewhat abstract, and it is not obvious how it may be implemented in terms of mental representat…
Modeling Infant Speech Sound Discrimination Using Simple Associative Networks
Infants' responses in speech sound discrimination tasks can be nonmonotonic over time. Stager and Werker (1997) reported such data in a bimodal habituation task. In this task, 8‐month‐old infants were capable of discriminations that involved minimal contrast pairs, whereas 14‐month‐old infants were not It was argued that the older infants' attenuated performance was linked to their processing of the stimuli for meaning. The authors suggested that…
Understanding Early Categorization
Mechanisms of Categorization in Infancy
This article presents a connectionist model of correlation‐based categorization by 10‐month‐old infants (Younger, 1985). Simple autoencoder networks were exposed to the same stimuli used to test 10‐month‐olds. The familiarization regime was kept as close as possible to that used with the infants. The performance of the model matched that of the infants. Both infants and networks used covariation information (when available) to segregate items int…
A connectionist account of asymmetric category learning in early infancy
Young infants show unexplained asymmetries in the exclusivity of categories formed on the basis of visually presented stimuli. A connectionist model is described that shows similar exclusivity asymmetries when categorizing the same stimuli presented to infants. The asymmetries can be explained in terms of an associative learning mechanism, distributed internal representations, and the statistics of the feature distributions in the stimuli. The mo…
Do cues from multiple modalities support quicker learning in primary schoolchildren
The current study investigates whether informative, mutually redundant audiovisual cues support better performance in a category learning paradigm. Research suggests that, under some conditions, redundant multisensory cues supports better learning, when compared with unisensory cues. This was examined systematically across two experiments. In Experiment 1, children aged 5, 7, and 10 years were allocated to 1 of the 3 "modality" conditions (audio …
Incidental category learning and cognitive load in a multisensory environment across childhood
Multisensory information has been shown to facilitate learning (Bahrick & Lickliter, 2000; Broadbent, White, Mareschal, & Kirkham, 2017; Jordan & Baker, 2011; Shams & Seitz, 2008). However, although research has examined the modulating effect of unisensory and multisensory distractors on multisensory processing, the extent to which a concurrent unisensory or multisensory cognitive load task would interfere with or support multisensory learning re…
Understanding Early Categorization
Mechanisms of Categorization in Infancy
This article presents a connectionist model of correlation‐based categorization by 10‐month‐old infants (Younger, 1985). Simple autoencoder networks were exposed to the same stimuli used to test 10‐month‐olds. The familiarization regime was kept as close as possible to that used with the infants. The performance of the model matched that of the infants. Both infants and networks used covariation information (when available) to segregate items int…
A connectionist account of asymmetric category learning in early infancy
Young infants show unexplained asymmetries in the exclusivity of categories formed on the basis of visually presented stimuli. A connectionist model is described that shows similar exclusivity asymmetries when categorizing the same stimuli presented to infants. The asymmetries can be explained in terms of an associative learning mechanism, distributed internal representations, and the statistics of the feature distributions in the stimuli. The mo…
Metaphor as Categorization
Metaphor as Categorization
A key issue for models of metaphor comprehension is to explain how, in some metaphorical comparison "A is B," only some features of B are transferred to A. The features of B that are transferred to A depend both on A and on B. This is the central thrust of Black's (1979) well-known interaction theory of metaphor comprehension. However, this theory is somewhat abstract, and it is not obvious how it may be implemented in terms of mental representat…
Modeling Infant Speech Sound Discrimination Using Simple Associative Networks
Infants' responses in speech sound discrimination tasks can be nonmonotonic over time. Stager and Werker (1997) reported such data in a bimodal habituation task. In this task, 8‐month‐old infants were capable of discriminations that involved minimal contrast pairs, whereas 14‐month‐old infants were not It was argued that the older infants' attenuated performance was linked to their processing of the stimuli for meaning. The authors suggested that…
From Parts to Wholes
Visual object processing in infancy is often described as proceeding from an early stage in which object features are processed independently to a later stage in which relations between features are taken into account (e.g., Cohen, 1998). Here we present the Representational Acuity Hypothesis, which argues that this behavioral shift can be explained by a developmental decrease in the size of neural receptive fields in the cortical areas responsib…
The Role of Context in the Categorization of Hybrid Toy Stimuli by 18‐Month‐Olds
Using a sequential touching procedure, we examined whether 18‐month‐olds could use different categorization strategies adaptively as a function of context. Infants were presented with test toys of land animals (quadrupeds), cars, and hybrids made by recombining car parts with animal parts. Infants who experienced a context emphasizing a taxonomic divide were subsequently more likely to form categories that reflected a taxonomic divide, whereas in…
Attention to Multiple Cues During Spontaneous Object Labeling
It is well established that 2-year-olds attribute a novel label to an object's global shape rather than local features (i.e., parts). Although recent studies have found that younger infants also attend to global rather than local features when given a label, the test stimuli in these experiments confounded parts and shape by varying both or neither. With infants (16- and 24-month-olds) and adults, this experiment disentangled shape and parts with…
Mapping the origins of time
Time is central to any understanding of the world. In adults, estimation errors grow linearly with the length of the interval, much faster than would be expected of a clock-like mechanism. Here we present the first direct demonstration that this is also true in human infants. Using an eye-tracking paradigm, we examined 4-, 6-, 10-, and 14-month-olds' responses to the omission of a recurring target, on either a 3- or 5-s cycle. At all ages (a) bot…
Are you looking at me?” How children’s gaze judgments improve with age
Adults' judgments of another person's gaze reflect both sensory (e.g., perceptual) and nonsensory (e.g., decisional) processes. We examined how children's performance on a gaze categorization task develops over time by varying uncertainty in the stimulus presented to 6- to 11- year-olds (n = 57). We found that younger children responded "direct" over a wider range of gaze deviations. We also found that increasing uncertainty led to an increase in…
Getting into the Groove
Despite good early rhythm processing abilities, and clear enjoyment of music, infants appear not to be able to spontaneously synchronize their movement to the beat of a song (Zentner and Eerola, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107, 2010, 5768). We present a new social bell‐ringing task designed to facilitate synchronous movement to music in infants. Ten‐month‐olds, 18‐month‐olds, and adults were played musical tracks of various t…
Incidental category learning and cognitive load in a multisensory environment across childhood
Multisensory information has been shown to facilitate learning (Bahrick & Lickliter, 2000; Broadbent, White, Mareschal, & Kirkham, 2017; Jordan & Baker, 2011; Shams & Seitz, 2008). However, although research has examined the modulating effect of unisensory and multisensory distractors on multisensory processing, the extent to which a concurrent unisensory or multisensory cognitive load task would interfere with or support multisensory learning re…
Do cues from multiple modalities support quicker learning in primary schoolchildren
The current study investigates whether informative, mutually redundant audiovisual cues support better performance in a category learning paradigm. Research suggests that, under some conditions, redundant multisensory cues supports better learning, when compared with unisensory cues. This was examined systematically across two experiments. In Experiment 1, children aged 5, 7, and 10 years were allocated to 1 of the 3 "modality" conditions (audio …
Are two cues always better than one? The role of multiple intra-sensory cues compared to multi-cross-sensory cues in children's incidental category learning
Capturing touch in parent–infant interaction
Naturally occurring high levels of caregiver touch promote offspring development in many animal species. Yet, caregiver touch remains a relatively understudied topic in human development, possibly due to challenges of measuring this means of interaction. While parental reports (e.g., questionnaires, diaries) are easy to collect, they may be subject to biases and memory limitations. In contrast, observing touch in a short session of parent–child i…
Does surprise enhance infant memory? Assessing the impact of the encoding context on subsequent object recognition
A discrepancy between what was predicted and what is observed has been linked to increased looking times, changes in brain electrical activity, and increased pupil dilation in infants. These processes associated with heightened attention and readiness to learn might enhance the encoding and memory consolidation of the surprising object, as suggested by both the infant and the adult literature. We therefore investigated whether the presence of sur…
Learning in Noisy Classrooms
Classrooms are noisy, yet little is known about pupils’ subjective reactions to noise. We surveyed 112 children between 8.70 and 11.38 years of age and extracted five dimensions in their reactions to noise by factorial analyses: (1) perceived classroom loudness, (2) hearing difficulties, (3) attention capture, (4) interference, (5) annoyance from noise. Structural Equation Models were run to better understand interindividual differences in noise …
Left, right, left, right
This study investigated toddlers' ability to control simple alternating pattern actions, and how this relates to motor competence and executive functions. 70 toddlers between 24 and 36 months of age were instructed to sort coins in an alternating pattern into two boxes; left, right, left, right etc. Executive functions and memory competence performance were assessed in additional small games. The results showed that the ability to plan and execut…
Children’s Effortful Control Skills, but Not Their Prosocial Skills, Relate to Their Reactions to Classroom Noise
Environmental noise is one of the main sources of pollution in today's modern world. Health effects associated with noise depend on both environmental exposure and individuals' noise sensitivity. However, still little is known as to why some children are more noise sensitive than others. Studies to date have focused on adult populations and have not considered both cognitive and personality factors when explaining noise sensitivity. The current r…
Psychology (19 works) · Cognitive psychology (15 works) · Developmental psychology (13 works) · Child and Animal Learning Development (12 works) · Computer Science (11 works) · Artificial Intelligence (9 works) · Cognition (8 works) · Neuroscience (8 works) · Categorization (7 works) · Communication (5 works)