Occluding the trajectory of an object: Effects on predicting containment with 9-, 12- and 16-month-olds

Dejonckheere, Peter; Smitsman, Ad W.; Verhofstadt-Denève, Leni

doi:10.1016/j.infbeh.2006.12.002

Cited by 3 publications

(5 citation statements)

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“…The findings highlight the significance of exploratory activities such as looking and event information to support infants' perception of containment. They also add to results from our earlier studies (Dejonckheere et al, 2005, 2006, 2007), which together suggest two interrelated processes that develop with age. The first concerns the process of discriminating different outcomes on the basis of the topology that arises for the objects when they interact and that distinguishes different outcomes.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 77%

“…When the experimenters showed the descent of the object into a too narrow container and occluded the passing-through episode from sight, only 16-month-old infants, and not younger infants, showed longer looking times. In a final study (Dejonckheere et al, 2007), a screen hid part of the trajectory but left the last 2, 5, or 16 cm above the container rim free for visual inspection. Longer looking times were found for end states that were inconsistent with the relative width of the objects, compared with states that were consistent with the relative width in tests with younger infants.…”

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confidence: 99%

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The significance of event information for 6- to 16-month-old infants' perception of containment.

Smitsman

Dejonckheere

Wit

2009

Developmental Psychology

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Four experiments familiarized 6-, 9-, 12-, and 16-month-old infants to a solid block that was repeatedly lowered into a semitransparent container. In test trials the end state, containment, was either compatible or incompatible with the objects' size and position. In Experiment 1, infants saw the block and box successively before they observed the end state. This forced infants to attend to each object individually and memorize its size and position while observing the end state. In Experiments 2 and 3, the block and container were shown simultaneously, the block suspended above the container at a distance of either 25 cm (Experiment 2) or 2 cm (Experiment 3). The shorter distance made direct comparison easier to perform. In Experiment 4, the full event was shown in which the block was lowered inside the container from a distance of 25 cm. Infants' perception of containment was related to the visual information that was available. When the event made it easier to grasp the relevant information, infants could perceive whether the block could pass in the container at a progressively younger age.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 77%

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confidence: 99%

The significance of event information for 6- to 16-month-old infants' perception of containment.

Smitsman

Dejonckheere

Wit

2009

Developmental Psychology

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“…In developmental research, learning by infants in non-social situations has been frequently explained by what aspects of the task or the task materials infants need to understand in order to produce a certain goal (e.g. Dejonckheere, Smitsman, & Verhofstadt-Denève, 2007;Huang & Charman, 2005;Thelen, Schöner, Scheier, & Smith, 2001). Conversely, superior learning outcomes in social settings are usually explained in terms of what infants understand of the (social) behavior of others (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In our view, there are many ways in which attention can be attuned to critical features of the environment from which affordances can be learned. These can be social such as pointing and gaze (de Bordes et al, 2013;Goldin-Meadow, 2007), non-social such as handling or dropping an object (Fritz et al, 2000;Zentall, 2001), and inanimate such as mechanical movements (Dejonckheere et al, 2007) or animations (Grant & Spivey, 2003). In natural social situations, infants ranging between 12 and 18 months of age tend to look at the hand movements and the gaze of the caregiver from which they can learn about what the caregiver is doing and more general leads to joint attention (Yu & Smith, 2013, 2017.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Attunement and Affordance Learning in Infants

Bordes

Hasselman

Cox

2019

Journal of Cognition and Development

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From a perceptual learning perspective, infants use social information (like gaze direction) in a similar way as other information in our physical environment (like object movements) to specify action possibilities. In the current study, we assumed that infants are able to learn an affordance upon observing an adult failing to act out that affordance, without appreciating object-directed intentions, or, communicative intent towards the infant. Using a variation of the Reenactment procedure, we found that when the attention of infants (N = 46, M age = 20 months) was drawn towards the eyes of the person before she acted out the failed attempt, either by ostensive cues or non-ostensive cues, infants achieved more affordances than when their attention was not directed towards the eyes. As directing the attention of infants to the eyes of another person frequently results in gaze following, this suggests that infants use the gaze direction of another person in order to learn what affordance that other person is trying to realize. In addition, the results of a spatiotemporal analysis on the eye-movements of infants suggest that the gaze and the object movements of the person facilitate learning by directing the attention of infants towards important object-directed actions on crucial moments during the failed attempt demonstrations. These results are discussed in terms of perceptual attunement and affordance learning.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Bordes

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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

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Occluding the trajectory of an object: Effects on predicting containment with 9-, 12- and 16-month-olds

Cited by 3 publications

References 7 publications

The significance of event information for 6- to 16-month-old infants' perception of containment.

The significance of event information for 6- to 16-month-old infants' perception of containment.

Attunement and Affordance Learning in Infants

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

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