Infants can learn abstract rules visually

Do not underestimate infants as they are capable of learning patterns from simply looking at the world around them, a first of its kind study has claimed.

According to the researchers, three to four month old infants can successfully detect visual patterns and generalise them to new sequences.

When we learn a rule or pattern in one domain, such as an alternating pattern of lights, we readily abstract this pattern and apply it to another domain. This ability, known as “abstract rule learning,” is a signature of human perception and cognition, the researcher said.

“If you present infants with the stimuli in a more appropriate way for the visual system, they can learn abstract rules visually, just as they can from speech,” said Brock Ferguson from the Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.