Beyond the information given: Infants’ transfer of actions learned through imitation

Early differentiation between drawing and writing in Chinese children

“…Previous studies outside the domain of writing have shown that children imitate the purposeful actions of others. They imitate even actions that yield no obvious or interesting results, even actions whose functions they do not understand (e.g., Lyons, Young, & Keil, 2007;Yang, Sidman, & Bushnell, 2010). Our findings suggest that the same conclusions apply to writing.…”

They can interact, but can they learn? Toddlers’ transfer learning from touchscreens and television

“…Related to this point, the presence of multiple nondemonstrated gestures suggests that children are learning throughout the 60-s test phase. Some researchers argue that motoric experience with a task actively promotes transfer (Yang, Sidman, & Bushnell, 2010) by providing the means to integrate information from the demonstration and reinforce goal-directed activity (Sommerville et al, 2008). It is likely that this mechanism of integrated learning occurs throughout early childhood (e.g., Barr, Walker, Gross, & Hayne, 2014).…”

Socio‐economic Status (SES) Affects Infants' Selective Exploration

“…For example, prereaching infants given 'sticky mittens' to assist in obtaining and exploring objects showed advanced reaching and visual exploration behaviours compared with infants without such training (Libertus & Needham, 2010). Active experience with objects also increases infants' interest in the actions of other people with the same object (Hauf, Aschersleben, & Prinz, 2007), sensitivity to others' action goals (Gerson & Woodward, 2014), knowledge about affordances (Yang, Sidman, & Bushnell, 2010) and object individuation (Wilcox, Woods, Chapa, & McCurry, 2007). So infants' active exploration is essential to perceptual, motor and cognitive development.…”