How children make sense of the world: A perceptual learning account

Abstract

Imitating intentionsRafaël is able to raise his legs on the right moment, namely after his diaper was untightened so his father can clean his bum. Instead of strictly imitating his father's arbitrary acts, which would have the rather absurd implication that he would lift up the legs of another infant being changed, he is able to re-establish the intended goal of his father's action which is having his legs raised so his father can proceed cleaning his bum easily. This can be regarded as imitation (Hopper, 2010;Meltzoff, 1995). According to some cognitive psychologists, Rafaël's behaviour displays an understanding of others as psychological beings just like himself (e.g., Meltzoff, 2007). This understanding includes an interpretation of behaviour of others as representing mental states such as beliefs, emotions, goals and intentions. Therefore, it could be that at some point, Rafaël understood the intended goal of his father, and established or imitated it accordingly (Baron-Cohen, 1995;Meltzoff, 1995). This seems an efficient manner by which the behaviour of others can be interpreted in a structured and meaningful way in order to respond to it adaptively. According to Meltzoff (1995, p. 838), "failure to attribute mental states to people confronts one with a bewildering series of movements, a jumble of behaviour that is difficult to predict and even harder to explain".From an ecological view, Rafaël might have learned to flex his legs independently, causing them to be in upright position, whenever he feels his diaper is untightened, and he is laying on the changing mat. Rafaël's repeated experience with the same behavioural sequence of his father during the diaper change, allows Rafaël to perceive his body to be in the same sequence of specific positions over and over again. In other words, Rafaël has experienced and learned the inevitability of his legs being raised at a certain point within the perceived action sequence that takes place within the dyadic interaction of the diaper change ritual (see Evans & Porter, 2009). More specifically, repeated experience of coregulating haptic and optic information in conjunction with bodily actions can mould a perception-action coupling in which specific perceptual information functionally integrates with a specific