Work

Experience matters: The impact of doing versus watching on infants' subsequent perception of tool-use events.

Year: 2008

Type: article

Abstract: Prior work suggests that active experience affects infants' understanding of simple actions. The present studies compared the impact of active and observational experience on infants' ability to identify the goal of a novel tool-use event. Infants either received active training and practice in using a cane to retrieve an out-of-reach toy or had matched observational experience before taking part in a habituation paradigm that we used to assess infants' ability to identify the goal of another person's tool-use acts. Active training alone facilitated 10-month-old infants' ability to identify the goal of the tool-use event. Active experience using tools may enable infants to build motor representations of tool-use events that subsequently guide action perception and support action understanding.

Source: Developmental Psychology

DOI: 10.1037/a0012296

Authors: Jessica A. Sommerville, Elina A. Hildebrand, Catharyn C. Crane

Institution: University of Washington

Language: English

Topic: Child and Animal Learning Development

Subfield: Developmental and Educational Psychology

Field: Psychology

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: green

Funders: University of Washington, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development

Awards: G4060603935, Infants' tool use action and understanding