The role of social signals in segmenting observed actions in 18-month-old children

Autor(en)

Christian Kliesch, Eugenio Parise, Vincent Reid, Stefanie Hoehl

Abstrakt

Learning about actions requires children to identify the boundaries of an action and its units. Whereas some action units are easily identified, parents can support children's action learning by adjusting the presentation and using social signals. However, currently little is understood regarding how children use these signals to learn actions. In the current study we investigate the possibility that communicative signals are a particularly suitable cue for segmenting events. We investigated this hypothesis by presenting 18-month-old children (N = 60) with short action sequences consisting of toy animals either hopping or sliding across a board into a house, but interrupting this two-step sequence either (a) using an ostensive signal as a segmentation cue, (b) using a non-ostensive segmentation cue, and (c) without additional segmentation information between the actions. Marking the boundary using communicative signals increased children's imitation of the less salient sliding action. Imitation of the hopping action remained unaffected. Crucially, marking the boundary of both actions using a non-communicative control condition did not increase imitation of either action. Communicative signals might be particularly suitable in segmenting non-salient actions that would otherwise be perceived as part of another action or as non-intentional. These results provide evidence of the importance of ostensive signals at event boundaries in scaffolding children's learning.

Organisation(en)

Institut für Psychologie der Entwicklung und Bildung

Externe Organisation(en)

Universität Potsdam, Max-Planck-Institut für Kognitions- und Neurowissenschaften, Lancaster University, Università degli Studi di Trento, University of Waikato

Journal

Developmental Science

Band

25

Anzahl der Seiten

11

ISSN

1363-755X

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.13198

Publikationsdatum

11-2021

Peer-reviewed

Ja

ÖFOS 2012

501005 Entwicklungspsychologie

Schlagwörter

ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete

Developmental and Educational Psychology, Cognitive Neuroscience

Link zum Portal

https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/the-role-of-social-signals-in-segmenting-observed-actions-in-18monthold-children(8cc047c9-8028-4e67-bcf3-eb570c500b8b).html