Young children use imitation communicatively

Altınok, Nazlı; Over, Harriet; Carpenter, Malinda

doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2023.105654

“…But perhaps some aspects of our procedure could have affected performance positively, and consequently made it harder to detect the effect of interest? Some recent studies suggest that for young children one function of imitation is facilitating social affiliation [126,127]. For the toddlers in our study, imitating the modeled actions might have been a way of communicating and affiliating with the model on the computer screen.…”

Section: The Proceduresmentioning

confidence: 63%

No evidence for adult smartphone use affecting attribution of communicative intention in toddlers: Online imitation study using the Sock Ball Task

Flatebø,

Óturai,

Hernik

2024

PLoS ONE

0

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Adults infer others’ communicative intentions, or lack thereof, from various types of information. Young children may be initially limited to attributions based on a small set of ostensive signals. It is unknown when richer pragmatic inferences about communicative intentions emerge in development. We sought novel type of evidence for such inferences in 17-to-19-month-olds. We hypothesized that toddlers recognize adults’ smartphone use in face-to-face interactions as incongruous with ostension and would rely on this interpretation when inferring the communicative intention of a model in a new imitation task conducted entirely online, dubbed the Sock Ball Task. In Experiment 1 with a between-subject design, we tested the hypothesis by assessing toddlers’ (N = 48) imitation of sub-efficient means and the goal-outcome presented by a model, who interrupted her ostensive demonstration either by using a smartphone or by fiddling with her wristwatch, depending on the condition. We expected toddlers to imitate the sub-efficient means more faithfully in the wristwatch condition than in the smartphone condition. But there was no significant effect of condition on imitation of neither means nor goal. Thus, our hypothesis was not borne out by the results. In Experiment 2, using a within-subject design, we first assessed toddlers’ (N = 24) performance in a no-demonstration baseline and then again after a no-disruption ostensive demonstration. In all three conditions with ostensive demonstration (Experiment 1: smartphone, wristwatch; Experiment 2: no-disruption), toddlers produced the demonstrated sub-efficient means significantly above the baseline level. In the no-disruption condition, goals were also imitated significantly above the baseline level. We conclude that the Sock Ball Task is a valid research tool for studying toddler imitation of novel means actions with objects. We end by discussing suggestions for improving the task in future studies.

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“…But perhaps some aspects of our procedure could have affected performance positively, and consequently made it harder to detect the effect of interest? Some recent studies suggest that for young children one function of imitation is facilitating social affiliation (120,121). For the toddlers in our study, imitating the modeled actions might have been a way of communicating and affiliating with the model on the Consequently, for most participants the test phase was preceded by an interaction between mostly the experimenter and the parent, that excluded the child.…”

Section: The Proceduresmentioning

confidence: 81%

No evidence for adult smartphone use affecting attribution of communicative intention in toddlers: online imitation study using the Sock Ball Task.

Flatebø,

Óturai,

Hernik

2023

Preprint

0

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Adults infer others’ communicative intentions, or lack thereof, from various types of information. Young children may be initially limited to attributions based on a small set of ostensive signals. It is unknown when richer pragmatic inferences about communicative intentions emerge in development. We sought novel type of evidence for such inferences in 17-to-19-month-olds. We hypothesized that toddlers recognize adults’ smartphone use in face-to-face interactions as incongruous with ostension and would rely on this interpretation when inferring the communicative intention of a model in a new imitation task conducted entirely online, dubbed the Sock Ball Task. In Experiment 1 with a between-subject design, we tested the hypothesis by assessing toddlers’ (N = 48) imitation of sub-efficient means and the goal-outcome presented by a model, who interrupted her ostensive demonstration either by using a smartphone or by fiddling with her wristwatch, depending on the condition. We expected toddlers to imitate the sub-efficient means more faithfully in the wristwatch condition than in the smartphone condition. But there was no significant effect of condition on imitation of neither means nor goal. Thus, our hypothesis was not borne out by the results. In Experiment 2, using a within-subject design, we first assessed toddlers’ (N = 24) performance in a no-demonstration baseline and then again after a no-disruption ostensive demonstration. In all three conditions with ostensive demonstration (Experiment 1: smartphone, wristwatch; Experiment 2: no-disruption), toddlers produced the demonstrated sub-efficient means significantly above the baseline level. In the no-disruption condition, goals were also imitated significantly above the baseline level. We conclude that the Sock Ball Task is a valid research tool for studying toddler imitation of novel means actions with objects. We end by discussing suggestions for improving the task in future studies.

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“…In the current study, however, children were already familiar with the labels used in the experiment, and likely knew that both the preferred and dispreferred labels could accurately refer to the object in question; thus, children's decision to produce dispreferred terms when their teammates did were likely due to social rather than epistemic goals. Given that children believed they were placed on a team with others who shared their interests, they may have repeated the labels of their teammates out of a desire to affiliate with their team (e.g., Altınok, Over, & Carpenter, 2023; Over, 2020), or to avoid the term used by the out‐group (e.g., Oostenbroek & Over, 2015). On the other hand, children may have felt social pressure to copy their teammates (e.g., Costanzo & Shaw, 1966; Haun & Tomasello, 2011; Henrich & Boyd, 1998; Nielsen & Blank, 2011), in which case, children may have repeated dispreferred labels because they felt obligated to, and not because they identified strongly with their group(mates).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Icing on the Cake. Or Is it Frosting? The Influence of Group Membership on Children's Lexical Choices

St. Pierre,

Jaffan,

Chambers

et al. 2024

Cognitive Science

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Adults are skilled at using language to construct/negotiate identity and to signal affiliation with others, but little is known about how these abilities develop in children. Clearly, children mirror statistical patterns in their local environment (e.g., Canadian children using zed instead of zee), but do they flexibly adapt their linguistic choices on the fly in response to the choices of different peers? To address this question, we examined the effect of group membership on 7‐ to 9‐year‐olds' labeling of objects in a trivia game, exploring whether they were more likely to use a particular label (e.g., sofa vs. couch) if members of their “team” also used that label. In a preregistered study, children (N = 72) were assigned to a team (red or green) and were asked during experimental trials to answer questions—which had multiple possible answers (e.g., blackboard or chalkboard)—after hearing two teammates and two opponents respond to the same question. Results showed that children were significantly more likely to produce labels less commonly used by the community (i.e., dispreferred labels) when their teammates had produced those labels. Crucially, this effect was tied to group membership, and could not be explained by children simply repeating the most recently used label. These findings demonstrate how social processes (i.e., group membership) can guide linguistic variation in children.

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Young children use imitation communicatively

Cited by 3 publications

References 37 publications

No evidence for adult smartphone use affecting attribution of communicative intention in toddlers: Online imitation study using the Sock Ball Task

No evidence for adult smartphone use affecting attribution of communicative intention in toddlers: Online imitation study using the Sock Ball Task

No evidence for adult smartphone use affecting attribution of communicative intention in toddlers: online imitation study using the Sock Ball Task.

The Icing on the Cake. Or Is it Frosting? The Influence of Group Membership on Children's Lexical Choices

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