A seminal moment in my academic career was in the late 1980s while attending one of my first scientific meetings as a graduate student and hearing a fascinating talk by a female neuroscientist, Adele Diamond. She was describing prefrontal cognitive abilities in human and nonhuman primate infants using the A-not-B task (Fig. 1; Diamond and Goldman-Rakic, 1986; Diamond, 1990). This task measures executive functions (e.g., working memory, inhibitory control and mental flexibility) that enable us to focus our attention, remember, plan and juggle multiple tasks. The A-not-B task itself requires the infant to uncover an attractive toy hidden in one of two locations as the child watches, followed by a short delay and then the child’s retrieval of the object by uncovering 1 of the 2 locations (Piaget, 1952). The name of the task comes from an error that infants under 8 months of age characteristically make. That is, after correctly finding a toy hidden in location A, when the toy is then placed in location B in plain sight of the infant, the infant nonetheless reaches back to the toy’s former location A.
Postdoctoral Associate at Early NeuroCognitive Development (ENCoDe), Binghamton University
The postdoctoral scholar is anticipated to work in collaboration with the PI on ongoing NIH-funded studies and piloting for future research projects, focusing on tracking the early development of the social brain and social perception in infancy. This individual will...