Naturalistic Experience and the Early Use of Symbolic Artifacts

“Don’t try this at home”: Toddlers’ imitation of new skills from people on video

“…When they came to the lab, these children were more than 3 times as successful in the search task as a control group who had played with their parents at home but had not seen live video (Troseth, 2003). In another study, the strongest predictor of 24-month-olds’ use of information from the lab video monitor for correct searching was their prior experience with live video on their parents’ video camera screens or on security monitors in stores (Troseth, Casey, Lawver, Walker, & Cole, 2007). Experience that emphasized the veracity and reliability of video led toddlers to choose (current) information from video over (outdated) information from their direct search of the room on earlier trials.…”

“…However, perceptual issues are unlikely to be the whole explanation for the “video deficit.” Schmidt, Crawley-Davis, and Anderson (2007) reported that 24-month-olds still had difficulties in the object retrieval task when 2-D versus 3-D perceptual differences were minimized or eliminated. Toddlers’ consistent success in the “video-behind-the-window” study (a 2-dimensional image disguised as a real event—Troseth & DeLoache, 1998), as well as their good use of information from video on the first trial of the “standard” video search task (Schmitt & Anderson, 2002; Suddendorf, 2003; Troseth et al, 2007) show that 24-month-olds can retrieve a memory of objects and events on video, but often do not use this information. However, task differences (e.g.…”

Infant emotional engagement in video mediated interactions

“…In this phase of the study, mothers of infants between 6 and 24 months are administered a 40-item survey assessing family demographics and the infant's exposure to screen media, with special emphasis on the infant's use of Video Mediated Communication. The survey will establish, among other things, the degree to which infants in my recruitment pool have been previously exposed to live video links and other interactive screens, a factor that has been shown to affect how infants and toddlers respond to screen content [4,10,19,21]. This survey will provide basic information regarding infant familiarity with the technologies that will be used in the laboratory phases of the study, as well as bring attention to potential confounds.…”

Associations Between Toddlers' Naturalistic Media Experience and Observed Learning from Screens

“…Troseth et al. () posit that live‐video experience clarifies the symbolic nature of images, thereby improving toddlers' ability to learn from symbolic media generally.…”

“…We adopted Troseth et al. 's () secondary‐analysis approach to examine associations between naturalistic media experience and observed screen‐based learning for a broad range of two‐year‐olds (23.5–35.9 months) who previously participated in several laboratory experiments. While we have reported elsewhere the immediate effects of experimental conditions on these toddlers' object retrieval (e.g., Choi & Kirkorian, ), there was considerable variability across individual children in each condition: Among all children included in this secondary analysis ( N = 135), performance on four object‐retrieval trials ran the full range of possible scores, with more than 10% of children earning each score from 0 to 4.…”