The extraordinary efficiency of early learning

Session moderated by Stanislas Dehaene.
Each 30' paper will be followed by a 10' discussion.

Abstract

At birth, babies appear to be able to do very little ; yet they quickly learn and develop, to the point where by the age of 6 they have become competent speakers of their mother tongue(s), who can also count, tie their shoelaces, run and climb, play word games and pranks, and so on. Since the 1970s, we have known how to involve even very young children in experiments, using so-called " behavioral " methods - we measure their behavior, for example where they look, their sucking behavior, how long they search for a hidden object, etc. - or brain imaging methods. These experiments have enabled us to learn an enormous amount about how babies learn so effectively : for example, they guess the meaning of words thanks to their context, exploit the " natural pedagogy ", calculate the intentions of their interlocutor, ask for help when they know they don't know (demonstrating a capacity for metacognition), etc. In this talk, we will review some of the key findings of this research into the learning mechanisms deployed by very young children.

Anne Christophe

Director of research at the CNRS, she headed the Laboratoire de sciences cognitives et psycholinguistique (ENS-EHESS-CNRS) for ten years. She studies language learning by babies, combining experimentation and modeling, in particular the mechanisms that enable them to learn the meaning of words, thanks to the synergies between vocabulary and grammar learning. A graduate of the École Polytechnique, she joined CNRS after a PhD in cognitive psychology, and a post-doctorate at University College London. She is also a member of the Conseil Scientifique de l'Éducation Nationale.