Repetition in infant-directed action depends on the goal structure of the object

Abstract

Adults automatically adjust their speech and actions in a way that may facilitate infants’ processing (e.g., Brand, Baldwin, & Ashburn, 2002). This research examined whether mothers’ use of repetition for infants depended on whether the object being demonstrated required a series of actions in sequence in order to reach a salient goal (called an “enabling” sequence). Mothers (n = 39) demonstrated six objects, three with an enabling sequence and three with an arbitrary sequence, to their 6- to 8- or 11- to 13-month-olds. As predicted, in demonstrations of objects with an enabling sequence, mothers were more likely to repeatseriesof actions, whereas for those without such structure, mothers were more likely to repeatindividual unitsof action. This may or may not have been deliberately pedagogical on mothers’ part, but nevertheless indicates another way in which input to infants is richly patterned to support their learning.

Finding events in a continuous world: A developmental account

“…Beyond these broad measures revealing adults’ highlighting of action boundaries when using IDA, and the effects of IDA on infants’ attention and learning, there is evidence that using IDA specifically facilitates the predictability of the adult's actions (a key component to event segmentation) in two ways. First, the TPs of adults’ IDA are informative regarding the goal structure of actions (Brand et al, ). For example, when adults demonstrate unrelated stand‐alone actions on a given object (e.g., rolling, shaping, and squeezing an object) to infants (6‐ to 8‐ and 11‐ to 13‐month‐olds), they spontaneously tend to repeat those individual actions, and TPs between different actions are relatively low.…”

“…Parents interacting with their infants spontaneously modify their actions in specific ways, relative to how they interact with other adults (Brand et al, 2002(Brand et al, , 2013(Brand et al, , 2009Brand, Shallcross, Sabatos, & Massie, 2007;Rohlfing, Fritsch, Wrede, & Jungmann, 2006). These behavioral modifications, termed infant-directed action (IDA) or motionese, seem to have a pedagogical component: Adults tailor their actions in particular ways to mark things they want infants to learn, such as how to carry out a goal-directed action (Brand et al, 2009;Csibra & Gergely, 2009). Brand et al (2002Brand et al ( , 2007 explored these modifications by providing mothers of infants with novel objects and having these mothers demonstrate actions on the objects either to their infant (age 6-8 months or 11-13 months) or to a close relative or friend.…”

Child-directed action promotes 2-year-olds’ imitation

“…Motionese also may have functions beyond attracting children's attention or preparing them for new information. Motionese modifications may also help to make demonstrated acts easier to parse (e.g., by highlighting boundary points with repetition and eye gaze; Brand et al, 2009;Brand, Hollenbeck, & Kominsky, 2013); stress which body parts and subtle physical motions are necessary (e.g., a horizontal twist before vertically pulling off a cap); and highlight the intentions behind the acts (e.g., by exaggerating facial expressions of surprise and satisfaction). If motionese functions in this way, children may learn more easily, and imitate more faithfully, when the suite of cues is shown throughout the demonstration.…”

Motion tracking of parents’ infant‐ versus adult‐directed actions reveals general and action‐specific modulations

“…The term kinematics is used to refer to the motion features of parents’ movements measured through motion tracking; we investigated 3D distance covered, velocity, proximity and effect duration, as well as the number of times parents repeated object demonstrations. Overall, patterns were expected to reflect those of past studies, in which IDAs have been larger (3D distance covered), closer (proximity), more repetitive (Brand et al, , ), slower (velocity; Rutherford & Przednowek, ) and have displayed action‐effects for longer (effect duration; Rohlfing et al, ). Parent kinematics were further examined within two types of comparisons, action‐specific versus general modulations and infant versus adult‐directed actions.…”

“…Like the documented benefits of IDS for language learning (e.g. Ferguson, ; Fernald et al, ; Golinkoff, Can, Soderstrom, & Hirsh‐Pasek, ; Saint‐Georges et al, ; Spinelli, Fasolo, & Mesman, ), they proposed that IDA, dubbed ‘motionese’, might facilitate action learning by enhancing attention to actions(Brand & Shallcross, ), highlighting units within the flow of motion (Brand et al, ), and emphasizing action functions (Brand et al, , ).…”