Goals influence memory and imitation for dynamic human action in 36‐month‐old children

Abstract

Adults' memory for action is organized according to a hierarchy of goals. Little previous research has examined whether goals also play a crucial role in young children's memory for action, and particularly whether goal information is privileged over veridical sequential order information. The current experiment investigated 3-year-old children's (N = 40) memory for naturally occurring interleaved action sequences: Sequences in which an actor switched back and forth between carrying out actions related to two distinct goals. Such sequences allowed a test of whether children's action representations prioritize a goal interpretation over veridical sequential information. Children's memory for the action events was assessed by deferred imitation, 5-min after the demonstration had ceased. Results indicated that children's memory prioritizes goals over veridical sequential order - even to the extent that the actual sequential order is distorted in memory. These findings deepen our understanding of action processing and memory with implications for social-cognitive development.