From The Mercury Archives: September 26, 1994 Human development at the forefront of infant research

UTD’s Callier Center. Some of the work is done on the UTD campus. This pulls the students out of the classroom and into the real world.

There is a fascination with things all humans once knew, but do not consciously remember. The fascination is now inspiring experiments being conducted with infants in the School of Human Development.

“Four years ago, our knowledge of the repertoire of infants was incomplete,” said Dr. Bert Moore, dean of the School of Human Development. In those four years, the School of Human Development has been working to create a program that focuses on early childhood. TO create a “world institution prominent in infant research,” the School of Human Development has received grants from the UTD foundation, the Meadows Foundation, the Hoblitzelle Foundation, and the Hillcrest Foundation. Funds are used to create facilities to test infants on campus and in hospitals.

The experiments are conducted in cooperation with Richardson Medical Center, Parkland Memorial Hospital,

UTD has developed a new tradition in master’s programs in human development, focusing on early childhood disorders and including a training program for early childhood intervention specialists.

The aim of the School of Human Development’s experimentation with the infants is to “try to determine new assessment to detect behavior and sensory delays in childhood development,” said Dr. Moore. The results of the tests will benefit society by creating guidelines for more costeffective detection and treatment of various disorders.

“I am genuinely interested in infants’ memory and the processing of sounds,” said Dr. Melanie Spence, the researcher heading up the experiments in the School of Human Development. Dr. Spence and UTD scientist, Dr. Tomas Bower has been working together to determine the existence and the extent of memory in infants.

One of the experiments being done at UTD tests infant memory for nursery rhymes the mother recites to the infant. A nursery rhyme is assigned to a volunteer mother, and the mother recites the nursery rhyme to the infant two times a day, four times each, for 14 days. One to three days following the final recitation, the mother and her infant come to the lab. Then researchers determine whether the infant will react differently to the familiar nursery rhyme, or a new nursery rhyme. Responses are assessed using a sucking procedure, which indicates infant responses through a pacifier. The infants are presented with two different cues on a computer screen: a bull’s eye and a checkerboard. Each screen is associated with a different vowel sound, and the old and new nursery rhymes are recited over the separate computer screens.

“We’re trying to determine whether babies can differentiate between the two nursery rhymes, and if they will suck to hear one nursery rhyme more than the other,” Dr. Spence said. The experiment focuses on memory in infants between the ages of six and twelve weeks old. Dr. Spence stresses the study “is still ongoing,” and no real results have yet been determined.

However, Dr. Spence is working with a colleague, Dr. David Moore at Pittzer College in Claremont California. “We are looking at when babies can distinguish different pitch patterns and when they can come to sort pitch patterns into groups,” Dr. Spence said. Dr. Spence and Dr. Moore is trying to see if babies differentiate between comfort and approval pitch patterns by observing whether a baby will look at one computer screen for another pitch pattern. Dr. Spence said, “We have found that six-month old babies can distinguish that difference, will they act differently towards and around their “bundles of joy” Well, I don’t know,” Dr. Spense said with a chuckle.