Child‐directed teaching and social learning at 18 months of age: evidence from Yucatec Mayan andUSinfants

Abstract

In several previous studies, 18-month-old infants who were directly addressed demonstrated more robust imitative behaviors than infants who simply observed another's actions, leading theorists to suggest that child-directed interactions carried unique informational value. However, these data came exclusively from cultural communities where direct teaching is commonplace, raising the possibility that the findings reflect regularities in infants' social experiences rather than responses to innate or a priori learning mechanisms. The current studies consider infants' imitative learning from child-directed teaching and observed interaction in two cultural communities, a Yucatec Mayan village where infants have been described as experiencing relatively limited direct instruction (Study 1) and a US city where infants are regularly directly engaged (Study 2). Eighteen-month-old infants from each community participated in a within-subjects study design where they were directly taught to use novel objects on one day and observed actors using different objects on another day. Mayan infants showed relative increases in imitative behaviors on their second visit to the lab as compared to their first visit, but there was no effect of condition. US infants showed no difference in imitative behavior in the child-directed vs. observed conditions; however, infants who were directly addressed on their first visit showed significantly higher overall imitation rates than infants who observed on their first visit. Together, these findings call into question the idea that child-directed teaching holds automatic or universal informational value.

Cumulative cultural learning: Development and diversity

“…The great majority of psychological research has been conducted in populations that are unrepresentative of human culture globally and historicallythose from Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) backgrounds (38,69). A growing literature within developmental psychology and the anthropology of childhood aims to correct the bias in studying WEIRD populations within the discipline (18,37,38,(70)(71)(72)(73)(74)(75)(76)(77)(78).…”

Learning From Others and Spontaneous Exploration: A Cross‐Cultural Investigation

“…While instructional interactions are common in the lives of most children growing up in industrialized communities, explicit teaching occurs much less frequently in traditional Mayan communities (e.g., Correa‐Chavez & Rogoff, ; de Leon, ; Gaskins, ; Gaskins & Paradise, ; Rogoff, ; Rogoff, Mistry, Göncü, & Mosier, ; Shneidman, Gaskins, & Woodward, ; Shneidman & Goldin‐Meadow, ). Caregivers in these communities have a theory of learning that encourages children to pursue information in shared, noninstructional contexts (e.g., Gaskins, ; Gaskins & Paradise, ), and caregivers see development as a process that unfolds naturally, requiring little external help (e.g., Gaskins, ).…”

Selective learning and teaching among Japanese and German children.

“…Indeed, social factors (e.g., expressing respect, a desire to belong), and not just epistemic considerations, play a role in selective learning (Jaswal & Kondrad, 2016). Hence, just as prior social experiences are bound to affect children's dispositions to learn from others (Shneidman et al, 2016), this might also -and perhaps even more so -be the case for selective teaching.…”