Work

15‐month‐olds’ transfer of learning between touch screen and real‐world displays: language cues and cognitive loads

Year: 2012

Type: article

Abstract: Zack, E., Gerhardstein, P., Meltzoff, A. N. & Barr, R. (2013). 15‐month‐olds’ transfer of learning between touch screen and real‐world displays: language cues and cognitive loads. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology 54, 20–25. Infants have difficulty transferring information between 2D and 3D sources. The current study extends Zack, Barr, Gerhardstein, Dickerson & Meltzoff’s (2009) touch screen imitation task to examine whether the addition of specific language cues significantly facilitates 15‐month‐olds’ transfer of learning between touch screens and real‐world 3D objects. The addition of two kinds of linguistic cues (object label plus verb or nonsense name) did not elevate action imitation significantly above levels observed when such language cues were not used. Language cues hindered infants’ performance in the 3D→2D direction of transfer, but only for the object label plus verb condition. The lack of a facilitative effect of language is discussed in terms of competing cognitive loads imposed by conjointly transferring information across dimensions and processing linguistic cues in an action imitation task at this age.

Source: Scandinavian Journal of Psychology

DOI: 10.1111/sjop.12001

Authors: ELIZABETH ZACK, PETER GERHARDSTEIN, ANDREW N. MELTZOFF, RACHEL BARR

Institutions: Georgetown University, University of Washington, Binghamton University

Language: English

Topic: Child and Animal Learning Development

Subfield: Developmental and Educational Psychology

Field: Psychology

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Quality education

Open Access status: green

Funder: Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development