Children's Representation and Imitation of Events: How Goal Organization Influences 3‐Year‐Old Children's Memory for Action Sequences

Abstract

Children's imitation of adults plays a prominent role in human cognitive development. However, few studies have investigated how children represent the complex structure of observed actions which underlies their imitation. We integrate theories of action segmentation, memory, and imitation to investigate whether children's event representation is organized according to veridical serial order or a higher level goal structure. Children were randomly assigned to learn novel event sequences either through interactive hands-on experience (Study 1) or via storybook (Study 2). Results demonstrate that children's representation of observed actions is organized according to higher level goals, even at the cost of representing the veridical temporal ordering of the sequence. We argue that prioritizing goal structure enhances event memory, and that this mental organization is a key mechanism of social-cognitive development in real-world, dynamic environments. It supports cultural learning and imitation in ecologically valid settings when social agents are multitasking and not demonstrating one isolated goal at a time.

Connecting the Dots Between Past and Future: Constraints in Episodic Future Thinking in Early Childhood

“…Across the entire sample, retention of temporal information, but not spatial information, uniquely declined from the recall to the future condition. This is consistent with research showing that children retain spatial information better than temporal information (Lee, Wendelken, Bunge, & Ghetti, 2016;Picard, Cousin, Guillery-Girard, Eustache, & Piolino, 2012) and experience unique difficulty at integrating temporal information in future-oriented actions (Burns & Russell, 2016;Hayne & Imuta, 2011;Loucks, Mutschler, & Meltzoff, 2017;McCormack & Hanley, 2011;Ribordy Lambert, Lavenex, & Banta Lavenex, 2017). It is remarkable that declines were observed when children could have "simply" reproduced the same action sequences that were enacted in response to the recall task only a few moments earlier.…”

“…The results of Experiment 2 suggest that an important aspect of early episodic future thinking development is the understanding that past knowledge can be useful to help address future problems and goals. This connection becomes particularly important given recent literature that has underscored the role of goal structure in organizing event representations and guiding event memory in early childhood (Bekkering, Wohlschlager, & Gattis, 2000;Gleissner, Bekkering, & Meltzoff, 2000;Loucks & Meltzoff, 2013;Loucks et al, 2017;Williamson & Markman, 2006).…”

Finding events in a continuous world: A developmental account

“…Extensive research with adults suggests that event memory is functionally dependent on how the event was segmented (Flores et al, ; Sargent et al, ; Swallow et al, ; Zacks et al, ), and research with children provides further insights into how memory preserves event structure that is created during event segmentation. Imitation research reveals that 3‐year‐olds’ memories for observed action events, both familiar and novel, are organized based on hierarchical goal structure rather than the temporal order in which the actions were observed (Loucks & Meltzoff, ; Loucks, Mutschler, & Meltzoff, ), suggesting children segment events according to goal hierarchies and preserve this segmentation in their memory for the events.…”

Event boundaries in memory and cognition

“…When important situation features change, such as new movements, spatial location, characters, objects, causes, and goals, then prediction error spikes. As a result, the current event model is updated and this is experienced as an event boundary [8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14]. This can be revealed by explicitly asking people to indicate the boundaries between events during comprehension [15, 16]; this has been done for videos of everyday activities [17, 18], dance movements [19] and visual and written narratives [20, 21].…”