Suchergebnisse

AbstractThe theory of natural pedagogy has proposed that infants can use ostensive signals, including eye contact, infant‐directed speech, and contingency to learn from others. However, the role of bodily gestures, such as hand‐waving, in social learning has been largely ignored. To address this gap in the literature, this study sought to determine whether 4‐month‐old infants exhibited a preference for horizontal or vertical (control) hand‐waving gestures. We also examined whether horizontal hand‐waving gestures followed by pointing facilitated the process of object learning in 9‐month‐old infants. Results showed that 4‐month‐old infants preferred horizontal hand‐waving gestures to vertical hand‐waving gestures, even when featural and contextual information were removed. Furthermore, horizontal hand‐waving gestures induced identity encoding for cued objects, whereas vertical gestures did not. These findings highlight the role of communicative intent embedded in bodily movements and indicate that hand‐waving can serve as a new type of ostensive signal.

AbstractThe text of picture books is a fertile source through which young children learn about mental states. By focusing on English and Japanese books (N = 100; for children aged 3–5 years) as respective representatives of independent and interdependent cultures, the present study examined the cultural differences in the use of two types of mental state language: emotion and cognition. While our findings revealed no cultural differences in emotional word tokens or types, cognitive word tokens and types were higher in English picture books than in Japanese ones. Importantly, English picture books exhibited more self‐oriented mental state references, while Japanese picture books had more other‐oriented mental state references. Our study suggests that mental state references in picture books reflect culture‐specific characteristics.

Abstract'Motionese' can be defined as an exaggerated and repetitive action. It induces preference and learning in infants. However, which action component of motionese promotes infants' preference and learning remains largely unknown. In this study, we focused on inefficiency and toward‐ness of action. Our study demonstrates that observing an inefficient holding out action can induce a visual preference in 4‐month‐old infants and learning in 10‐month‐old infants through eight experiments (N = 192). We found that when infants observe inefficient holding out action, the action attracts their attention and facilitates learning about the identity of the toy object accompanying it, especially when people direct inefficient actions towards them. Our findings indicate that both action efficiency and toward‐ness may be key factors in infant learning.

AbstractIndividuals engage in reputation management by adjusting their behaviour in front of others. As gossip plays an important role in human society, individuals need to concern themselves with not only a present observer's evaluations but also non‐present people's impressions. In this study, we investigated whether 4‐ and 8‐year‐old children (N = 144) would adjust their sharing behaviours when presented with the possibility of an observer's gossiping. We manipulated whether the receiver of gossip could identify the child being gossiped about by using real‐life group boundaries. The children shared their treats with an anonymous peer in front of an observer under three conditions. In the same‐group gossip condition, the observer told the children that she would report their behaviour to their friends. In the different‐group gossip condition, the children's behaviours were to be reported to an unknown peer (from a different kindergarten or elementary school). In the no‐gossip condition, the observer would not gossip. Children from both age groups shared more treats in the two gossip conditions than in the no‐gossip circumstance, regardless of whether the gossip receiver could identify them. These findings suggest that 4‐ and 8‐year‐old children attempt to manage their reputation when they could be a target of gossip.

AbstractVocal imitation plays a fundamental role in human language acquisition from infancy. Little is known, however, about how infants imitate other's sounds. We focused on three factors: (a) whether infants receive information from upright faces, (b) the infant's observation of the speaker's mouth and (c) the speaker directing their gaze towards the infant. We recorded the eye movements of 6‐month‐olds who participated in experiments watching videos of a speaker producing vowel sounds. We found that an infants' tendency to vocally imitate such videos increased as a function of (a) seeing upright rather than inverted faces, (b) their increased looking towards the speaker's mouth and (c) whether the speaker directed their gaze towards, rather than away from infants. These latter findings are consistent with theories of motor resonance and natural pedagogy respectively. New light has been shed on the cues and underlying mechanisms linking infant speech perception and production.

AbstractMental imagery refers to representations and the accompanying experience of sensory information in the absence of appropriate sensory input. Little is known about children's social imagery, imagery about an agent. It is possible that children's social imagery may qualitatively differ from that of adults by involving more perceptual characteristics. We conducted three experiments to investigate the perceptual existence of social imagery when induced by verbal cues. Experiment 1 was a precondition for Experiments 2 and 3, and we examined whether children's and adults' predictive eye movements were disrupted by the presence of a real person's face. Preschool children (n = 20) and adults (n = 20) watched a video where a woman, with/without her face shown, placed balls into a bucket. Participants' gazes were less predictive of the woman's actions in 'Face' versus 'No-Face' videos, indirectly indicating the perceptual presence of agents. Next, we examined whether adults' and children's predictive eye movements were affected by imagining a person. In Experiment 2, adult participants were presented with a video where the balls moved automatically and were asked to either watch the video (Ball condition,n = 20) or imagine that an invisible person moved the balls (Imagination condition,n = 20). Adult gazes did not differ between conditions. However, in Experiment 3, preschool children's gazes were less predictive when imagining an invisible person's actions (Invisible condition,n = 20) than when not imagining anything (Ball condition,n = 20) or when imagining an object (Fan condition,n = 20). The results suggest that children experience realistic social imagery induced by verbal cues.

AbstractWhen interacting with infants, human adults modify their behaviours in an exaggerated manner. Previous studies have demonstrated that infant‐directed modification affects the infant's behaviour. However, little is known about how infant‐directed modification is elicited during infant–parent interaction. We investigated whether and how the infant's behaviour affects the mother's action during an interaction. We recorded three‐dimensional information of cup movements while mothers demonstrated a cup‐nesting task during interaction with their infants aged 11 to 13 months. Analyses revealed that spatial characteristics of the mother's task demonstration clearly changed depending on the infant's object manipulation. In particular, the variance in the distance that the cup was moved decreased after the infant's cup nesting and increased after the infant's task‐irrelevant manipulation (e.g. cup banging). This pattern was not observed for mothers with 6‐ to 8‐month‐olds, who do not have the fine motor skill to perform the action. These results indicate that the infant's action skill dynamically affects the infant‐directed action and suggest that the mother is sensitive to the infant's potential to learn a novel action.A video abstract of this article can be viewed at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNS2IHwLIhg&feature=youtu.be