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Association: Name: XVth Biennial International Conference on Infant Studies URL: http://www.isisweb.org
Citation: URL: http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p93731_index.html Direct Link: HTML Code:

Yang, Dahe. and Bushnell, Emily. "Do Infants Learn Actions or Actions as Causes From Imitation?" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the XVth Biennial International Conference on Infant Studies, Westin Miyako, Kyoto, Japan, Jun 19, 2006 <Not Available>. 2009-05-25 <http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p93731_index.html>

Yang, D. and Bushnell, E. W. , 2006-06-19 "Do Infants Learn Actions or Actions as Causes From Imitation?" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the XVth Biennial International Conference on Infant Studies, Westin Miyako, Kyoto, Japan <Not Available>. 2009-05-25 from http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p93731_index.html

Publication Type: Individual Poster Abstract: Recent research has established that imitation is an effective mechanism for preverbal infants to learn cause-effect behaviors (e.g. Meltzoff, 1995), and our prior work has shown that 14- to 16-month-old infants can even transfer object-related skills learned by imitation to new objects (Bushnell & Sidman, 2002; Yang & Bushnell, 2005). However, in the elicited imitation and transfer paradigms, it is not clear whether infants understand the actions as causes which produce the effects, or whether they merely learn the actions as affordances of the stimulus objects. Our aim in the current study is to examine this issue within the contexts of both imitation and transfer. Thirty-two 15-month infants participated, 16 in an imitation paradigm and 16 in a transfer paradigm. In the imitation procedure, the experimenter demonstrated two toys one after the other. The toys were identical except that one had a handle the experimenter pressed down and the other had a different handle that she pulled out. For each infant, one of these actions yielded an exciting effect, while the other action had no consequence. After each demonstration, infants were given a turn to produce the corresponding action with the toy. Following these learning trials, a test toy was offered to the baby without any demonstration. This toy was identical to the demonstration toys except that it had both the pressing and the pulling handles, and thus offered the baby a choice of actions. The procedure for infants in the transfer paradigm was identical except that the two-handled test toy was different in appearance from the demonstration toys. In the imitation paradigm, 12 of the 15 infants who manipulated the test toy produced the action which had been effective during the learning trials first, while just 3 produced the ineffective action first (binomial p=.035). However in the transfer paradigm, infants did not selectively produce the “working” action first; 8 did it first while 5 did the “broken” action first. Similarly, infants produced the “working” action faster than the “broken” action in the imitation paradigm but not in the transfer paradigm (group x action interaction p = .09), and infants also persisted with the “working” handle longer than with the “broken” handle in imitation, but not in transfer (group x action interaction p < .05). The results suggest that infants understand a demonstrated action as causal within the context of a particular object. However, they evidently do not expect this action to also be effective with a novel object. Thus, infants may construe causes as highly specific to individual objects, and the transfer we have observed in earlier studies may be mediated by learned affordances of the handles or by the development of motor attractors rather than by causal expectations.

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