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Examining Recall Memory in Infancy and Early Childhood Using the Elicited Imitation Paradigm
Published on: April 28, 2016
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Infants learn enduring functions of novel tools from action demonstrations
Mikołaj Hernik1, Gergely Csibra2
1Cognitive Development Center, Central European University, 1051 Budapest, Hungary.
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology
|December 3, 2014
Summary
Infants learn tool functions by observing goal-directed actions and communicative demonstrations. Communication helps infants form resilient, general knowledge about tool properties.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Development
- Developmental Psychology
- Infant Learning
Background:
- Infant goal attribution supports social learning of artifact functions.
- Infant sensitivity to communication aids acquisition of generic knowledge about object properties.
Purpose of the Study:
- Investigate conditions facilitating infant acquisition of enduring tool functions.
- Test hypotheses on infant learning of novel tool functions from instrumental actions and communication.
Main Methods:
- Employed a violation-of-expectation paradigm with 13.5-month-old infants.
- Examined how infants encode action end states in relation to novel tools.
- Compared learning from infant-directed versus non-infant-directed demonstrations.
Main Results:
- Infants encode arbitrary action end states with novel tools when interpretable as goals.
- Tool-goal mappings are not formed if action end states cannot be seen as goals.
- Communicative demonstrations yield more resilient tool-goal mappings than non-communicative ones.
Conclusions:
- Infant tool function acquisition is guided by teleological action interpretation.
- Communicative demonstrations foster enduring, generic knowledge about tool properties.
- Infants expect communication to reveal dispositional properties of tools.
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