NFANTS LEARN TO TRANSFER KNOWLEDGE BY 16 MONTHS

Julie Hupp, assistant professor of psychology (Newark), is the lead author of a study on an important milestone in infants’ development: the ability to transfer knowledge to new situations.

Hupp and Vladimir Sloutsky, professor of psychology, director of the Center for Cognitive Science and co-author of the study, found that 8-month-olds had trouble using newly acquired knowledge in a different circumstance, but 16-month-olds could do so.

“Sometime between 8 and 16 months, infants begin learning how to learn,” said Hupp. “They begin to transfer their new knowledge and use it in a totally different situation, which is a very important step in development.”

While many scientists had assumed that the ability to transfer knowledge was a product of infant development, no research had tested when that might occur, except for the case of word learning, Hupp said.

Their work appears online in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology. Read the Office of Research Communications press release, written by Jeff Grabmeier, http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/learntransfer.htm