Neuroscience
Infants of just 14 months already have a nonsense-detector that alerts them to unreliable people, from whom they'll no longer bother taking lessons.
Diane Poulin-Dubois demonstrated this in a study with 60 infants. In one "reliable" condition, the researcher smiled and exclaimed with delight on discovering a toy in a container, before then passing it to the infant to inspect. In the other "unreliable" condition, the researcher similarly expressed delight but there was in fact no toy. This was repeated several times.
Next, the same researcher produced a touch-on light, placed it on the desk and switched it on by leaning forwards and using her forehead. She repeated this three times then passed the light to the infant. The key finding is that infants in the "unreliable" condition were far less likely to bother imitating the researcher by switching on the light with their own forehead. Across two attempts, 34 per cent of infants in the unreliable condition used their forehead to turn the light on, compared with 61 per cent of infants in the reliable condition.
"Infants seem to perceive reliable adults as capable of rational action, whose novel, unfamiliar behaviour is worth imitating," the researchers said. "In contrast, the same behaviour performed by a previously unreliable adult is interpreted as irrational or inefficient, thus not worthy of imitating."
Other explanations for the finding were ruled out. For example, infants in both the reliable and unreliable conditions were equally attentive to the researcher's demonstration with the light, so it's not the case that they'd simply lost interest.
The new finding adds to a growing body of research showing children's selectivity in who they choose to learn from. For example, children prefer to learn from adults as opposed to their peers, and they prefer to learn from people they are familiar with and who appear more certain, confident and knowledgeable. Prior research with infants found they were less likely to follow the gaze of an unreliable adult who'd earlier expressed delight at an empty container.
"These results add to a growing body of literature that suggests that infants are adept at generalising their knowledge about the reliability of other people across varying contexts," the researchers said. "The unique contribution of the present study shows that, similar to older children, infants are able to keep track of an individual's history of being accurate or inaccurate and use this information to guide their subsequent learning."
_________________________________
D Poulin-Dubois, I Brooker, and A Polonia (2011). Infants prefer to imitate a reliable person. Infant Behaviour and Development DOI: 10.1016/j.infbeh.2011.01.006
This post was written by Christian Jarrett for the BPS Research Digest.
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Neuroscience
Toddlers won't bother learning from you if you're daft
Diane Poulin-Dubois demonstrated this in a study with 60 infants. In one "reliable" condition, the researcher smiled and exclaimed with delight on discovering a toy in a container, before then passing it to the infant to inspect. In the other "unreliable" condition, the researcher similarly expressed delight but there was in fact no toy. This was repeated several times.
Next, the same researcher produced a touch-on light, placed it on the desk and switched it on by leaning forwards and using her forehead. She repeated this three times then passed the light to the infant. The key finding is that infants in the "unreliable" condition were far less likely to bother imitating the researcher by switching on the light with their own forehead. Across two attempts, 34 per cent of infants in the unreliable condition used their forehead to turn the light on, compared with 61 per cent of infants in the reliable condition.
"Infants seem to perceive reliable adults as capable of rational action, whose novel, unfamiliar behaviour is worth imitating," the researchers said. "In contrast, the same behaviour performed by a previously unreliable adult is interpreted as irrational or inefficient, thus not worthy of imitating."
Other explanations for the finding were ruled out. For example, infants in both the reliable and unreliable conditions were equally attentive to the researcher's demonstration with the light, so it's not the case that they'd simply lost interest.
The new finding adds to a growing body of research showing children's selectivity in who they choose to learn from. For example, children prefer to learn from adults as opposed to their peers, and they prefer to learn from people they are familiar with and who appear more certain, confident and knowledgeable. Prior research with infants found they were less likely to follow the gaze of an unreliable adult who'd earlier expressed delight at an empty container.
"These results add to a growing body of literature that suggests that infants are adept at generalising their knowledge about the reliability of other people across varying contexts," the researchers said. "The unique contribution of the present study shows that, similar to older children, infants are able to keep track of an individual's history of being accurate or inaccurate and use this information to guide their subsequent learning."
_________________________________
D Poulin-Dubois, I Brooker, and A Polonia (2011). Infants prefer to imitate a reliable person. Infant Behaviour and Development DOI: 10.1016/j.infbeh.2011.01.006This post was written by Christian Jarrett for the BPS Research Digest.
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Young children benefit socially and intellectually the more their carers engage and respond to them. Recognising this, we can train nursery staff to be as responsive to the children in their care as possible. But a new study by Claire Vallotton raises...
- How Babies Go Sole Searching
'From the Archives': first published in the Digest 16/02/04 Babies start using their feet to explore the world before they use their hands. That's according to James Galloway and Esther Thelen at the Universities of Indiana and Delaware, USA....
- Language Development
Nature Reviews Neuroscience offers the full text (HTML and .pdf) of this interesting overview to language development in its November issue: Patricia K. Kuhl. Early language acquisition: Cracking the speech code. Nature Reviews Neuroscience 2004....
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