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Full-Text Articles in Psychology
Child-‐Directed Action Promotes 2-‐Year-‐Olds’ Imitation, Rebecca Williamson, Rebecca J. Brand
Child-‐Directed Action Promotes 2-‐Year-‐Olds’ Imitation, Rebecca Williamson, Rebecca J. Brand
Psychology Faculty Publications
Children are voracious learners and adults are ubiquitous teachers. This project investigates whether the special infant-‐ directed action modifications parents use when teaching their children (called “motionese”; Brand, Baldwin, & Ashburn, 2002) improves two-‐year-‐olds’ imitation. Children saw an adult perform a series of acts on four novel objects, using either an infant-‐directed style (including larger range of motion and enhanced boundary marking) or an adult-‐directed style. Children’s imitation of the acts was higher in the infant-‐ directed relative to the adult-‐directed condition, and both types of demonstration increased imitation relative to baseline (no demonstration). We propose that motionese may also …
Learning How To Help Others: Two-Year-Olds’ Social Learning Of A Prosocial Act, Rebecca A. Williamson, Meghan R. Donohue, Erin C. Tully
Learning How To Help Others: Two-Year-Olds’ Social Learning Of A Prosocial Act, Rebecca A. Williamson, Meghan R. Donohue, Erin C. Tully
Psychology Faculty Publications
Engaging in prosocial behaviors (acts that benefit others) is associated with many positive outcomes in children, including the development of positive peer relationships, academic achievement, and good psychological functioning. This study examines the social learning mechanisms toddlers use to acquire prosocial behaviors. This brief report presents a new experimental procedure in which 2-year-olds (28-32 months, N=30) saw a video of an adult performing a novel prosocial behavior in response to another person’s distress. The children then had the opportunity to imitate and implement the behaviors in response to their own parent’s physical distress. Children who saw the video were …
Own And Others’ Prior Experiences Influence Children’S Imitation Of Causal Acts, Rebecca Williamson, Andrew N. Meltzoff
Own And Others’ Prior Experiences Influence Children’S Imitation Of Causal Acts, Rebecca Williamson, Andrew N. Meltzoff
Psychology Faculty Publications
Young children learn from others’ examples, and do so selectively. Here we examine whether the efficacy of prior experience influences children’s tendency to imitate. 36-‐ month-‐olds received prior experience on a causal learning task. The children either performed the task themselves or watched an adult perform it. The nature of the experience was systematically manipulated such that the actor had either an easy or a difficult experience solving the task. Next, a second adult demonstrated an innovative technique for solving the task. Children who had a difficult first-‐person experience and those who had witnessed another person having a difficult time …
Learning The Rules: Observation And Imitation Of A Sorting Strategy By 36-Month-Old Children, Rebecca Williamson, Vikram K. Jaswal, Andrew N. Meltzoff
Learning The Rules: Observation And Imitation Of A Sorting Strategy By 36-Month-Old Children, Rebecca Williamson, Vikram K. Jaswal, Andrew N. Meltzoff
Psychology Faculty Publications
Two experiments investigate the scope of imitation by testing whether 36-month-olds can learn to produce a categorization strategy through observation. After witnessing an adult sort a set of objects by a visible property (their color, Experiment 1) or a non-visible property (the particular sounds produced when the objects were shaken, Experiment 2), children showed significantly more sorting by those dimensions relative to children in control groups, including a control in which children saw the sorted endstate but not the intentional sorting demonstration. The results show that 36-month-olds can do more than imitate the literal behaviors they see; they also abstract …