The effects of modelling, local stimulus enhancement, and affordance demonstration on the production of object‐directed actions in 6‐month‐old infants

Horne, Pauline J.; Erjavec, Mihela; Lovett, Victoria E.

doi:10.1348/026151008x297126

Cited by 14 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…Horne et al [2009] show that enhancement and demonstration of the affordance of objects support the production of objectdirected actions by very young humans (six months old in their study) as well as did full demonstrations of a target action. They showed infants a puppet wearing a mitten.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 64%

When and how well can human‐socialized capuchins match actions demonstrated by a familiar human?

Fragaszy

Deputte²,

Cooper

et al. 2011

American J Primatol

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Capuchin monkeys have provided uneven evidence of matching actions they observe others perform. In accord with theories emphasizing the attentional salience of object movement and spatial relationships, we predicted that human-reared monkeys would better match events in which a human demonstrator moved an object into a new relation with another object or surface than other kinds of actions. Three human-reared capuchins were invited repeatedly by a familiar human to perform a fixed set of actions upon objects or upon their bodies, using the "Do as I do" procedure. Actions directed at the body were matched less reliably than actions involving objects, and actions were matched best when the monkey looked at the demonstration for at least 2 sec and performed its action within a few seconds after the demonstration. The most commonly matched actions were those that one monkey performed relatively often when the experiment began. One monkey partially reproduced three novel actions (out of 48 demonstrations), all three involving moving or placing objects, and two of which it also performed following other demonstrations. These findings contribute convergent evidence that capuchin monkeys display social facilitation of activity, enhanced interest in particular objects and emulation of spatial outcomes. This pattern can support the development of shared manipulative skills, as evident in traditions of foraging and tool use in natural settings. The findings do not suggest that human rearing substantively altered capuchins' ability or interest in matching the actions of a familiar human, although visual attention to the human demonstrator may have been greater in these monkeys than in normally reared monkeys.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 64%

When and how well can human‐socialized capuchins match actions demonstrated by a familiar human?

Fragaszy

Deputte²,

Cooper

et al. 2011

American J Primatol

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show abstract

“…This is consistent with previous findings which showed a similar relationship between toddlers' social experience of producing different hand‐to‐body gestures – similar to those required in the present study for the comprehension tests – in play, and their ability to imitate those gestures in response to adult modelling (Erjavec & Horne, 2008). Indeed, using the imitation paradigm, previous studies were able to demonstrate a causal relationship between social training and children's imitative success (Erjavec, Lovett & Horne, 2009; Horne & Erjavec, 2007; Horne, Erjavec, & Lovett, 2009).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Comprehension and production of body part labels in 2‐ to 3‐year‐old children

Camões-Costa

Erjavec

Horne

2011

British J of Dev Psycho

Self Cite

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This study examined which body part labels children could (i) produce when the experimenter touched different locations on her own body, asking each time 'What's this?' and (ii) comprehend by touching the correct locations on their own bodies in response to the experimenter asking 'Where's the [body-part label]?'. Seventeen children aged between 26 and 41 months, tested in a repeated measures procedure, were presented with 50 different body part stimuli in 200 test trials per child. Overall, the children produced fewer body part labels than they could comprehend. The accuracy of children's responses depended on (i) the location or extent of each body part (facial and broad body features were better known; joints and features in or attached to broad body parts the least well known); (ii) the amount of sensory (but not motor) representation each body part has in the human cortex; and (iii) whether a body part was commonly named by caregivers. These results present a precise mapping of the body parts that young children are able to name and locate on their own bodies in response to body part names; they suggest several possible determinants of lexical-semantic body knowledge and add to the understanding of how it develops in childhood.

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“…There is a gradual increase in the amount of information that can be processed over developmental age, but in six-month-olds, local stimulus enhancement already improves performance [15]. It is thus not surprising that a saliency manipulation during the modeling phase results in selective imitation, even if the likelihood of imitation was furthermore modulated by the presence or absence of situational constraints.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rethinking ‘Rational Imitation’ in 14-Month-Old Infants: A Perceptual Distraction Approach

et al. 2012

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In their widely noticed study, Gergely, Bekkering, and Király (2002) showed that 14-month-old infants imitated an unusual action only if the model freely chose to perform this action and not if the choice of the action could be ascribed to external constraints. They attributed this kind of selective imitation to the infants' capacity of understanding the principle of rational action. In the current paper, we present evidence that a simpler approach of perceptual distraction may be more appropriate to explain their results. When we manipulated the saliency of context stimuli in the two original conditions, the results were exactly opposite to what rational imitation predicts. Based on these findings, we reject the claim that the notion of rational action plays a key role in selective imitation in 14-month-olds.

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The effects of modelling, local stimulus enhancement, and affordance demonstration on the production of object‐directed actions in 6‐month‐old infants

Cited by 14 publications

References 42 publications

When and how well can human‐socialized capuchins match actions demonstrated by a familiar human?

When and how well can human‐socialized capuchins match actions demonstrated by a familiar human?

Comprehension and production of body part labels in 2‐ to 3‐year‐old children

Rethinking ‘Rational Imitation’ in 14-Month-Old Infants: A Perceptual Distraction Approach

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