Infants ranging from 6 to 9 months old have recently been shown to possess a brain mechanism that can recognize when an error has occurred in basic arithmetic, scientists say.
Referred to by some psychology students as the “Oh Shit” brain-wave – but more commonly referred to as error detection or executive attention – the frontal lobe of the brain essentially reacts to erroneous actions of the conscious mind and tries to send a message to the rest of the brain that something isn’t quite right.
“It’s like a double-take,” said Don Tucker, University psychology professor and Electrical Geodesics CEO and chief scientist. “Even if you’re not quite aware of it.”
Tucker said when the conscious mind makes a mistake there is activity in the frontal lobe.
“In other words, the brain is detecting a mistake but the consciousness is still going ahead with the action,” he said.
In adults, this mechanism was easily detected through brain scans. It was speculated that infants would “look longer” at something if they detected errors.
Now, thanks to the help of an 128-electrode brain-monitoring netting created by Tucker’s company, that mechanism can be seen working in the brains of infants.
Researchers Andrea Berger and Gabriel Tzur, both at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel, conducted the experiments using the netting on 24 infants 6 to 9 months of age.
Berger and Tzur placed the infants wearing the brain-monitoring netting in front of one or two puppets in a video taped theater, then blocked the infants view and altered the number of puppets the infant could see. When the infant’s view of the theater returned, brain activity occurred in the frontal lobe if the infant recognized a change, according to the study produced by Berger and Tzur.
This concept of error detection in infants was debated after it was first hypothesized in 1992, Tucker said. Back then, researchers measured the amount of time infants spent looking at a scene in which there was a change in the number of puppets. Some disputed the idea that infants were detecting an error, saying that they were simply fascinated with a changing scene, according to the study.
Tucker said this research shows that infants early on have ideas of how the world should be.
“If they see something that doesn’t make sense, they have an expectancy, they have a world model of what should happen,” Tucker said.”
Tucker’s company, a University spin-off called Electrical Geodesics, invented the brain-monitoring netting that was used in the experiments, which Tucker said causes no discomfort to the infants or anyone else who puts it on.
“(Our brain-wave system) is painless,” he said. “And the babies like them.”
The experiments fall in line with a research program that was established by Berger and psychology professor emeritus Michael Posner roughly four years ago while Berger was a researcher at the University of Oregon.
“The goal was to find out about the error detection ability of infants,” Posner said.
Posner said the study was important to understanding the capacity of an infant’s knowledge.
“It does provide conformation for something that is very important; that it is possible to observe the infant’s knowledge in various domains.”
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