A solution to generalized learning from small training sets found in everyday infant experiences
This addresses the problem of how infants generalize from limited data, offering principles for efficient learning in AI and other domains.
The researchers analyzed infant visual experiences and found they have a 'lumpy' similarity structure with clusters of similar images and rare variable ones, which when mimicked in machine learning improves generalization from small datasets.
Young children readily recognize and generalize visual objects labeled by common nouns, suggesting that these basic level object categories may be given. Yet if they are, how they arise remains unclear. We propose that the answer lies in the statistics of infant daily life visual experiences. Whereas large and diverse datasets typically support robust learning and generalization in human and machine learning, infants achieve this generalization from limited experiences. We suggest that the resolution of this apparent contradiction lies in the visual diversity of daily life, repeated experiences with single object instances. Analyzing egocentric images from 14 infants (aged 7 to 11 months) we show that their everyday visual input exhibits a lumpy similarity structure, with clusters of highly similar images interspersed with rarer, more variable ones, across eight early-learned categories. Computational experiments show that mimicking this structure in machines improves generalization from small datasets in machine learning. The natural lumpiness of infant experience may thus support early category learning and generalization and, more broadly, offer principles for efficient learning across a variety of problems and kinds of learners.