The role of social signals in segmenting observed actions in 18-month-old children.

Christian Kliesch,Vincent Reid,Eugenio Parise,Stefanie Hoehl

doi:10.1111/desc.13198

Abstract

Learning about actions requires children to identify the boundaries of an action and its units. Whereas some action units are easily identified, parents can support children's action learning by adjusting the presentation and using social signals. However, currently, little is understood regarding how children use these signals to learn actions. In the current study, we investigate the possibility that communicative signals are a particularly suitable cue for segmenting events. We investigated this hypothesis by presenting 18-month-old children (N=60) with short action sequences consisting of toy animals either hopping or sliding across a board into a house, but interrupting this two-step sequence either (a) using an ostensive signal as a segmentation cue, (b) using a non-ostensive segmentation cue and (c) without additional segmentation information between the actions. Marking the boundary using communicative signals increased children's imitation of the less salient sliding action. Imitation of the hopping action remained unaffected. Crucially, marking the boundary of both actions using a non-communicative control condition did not increase imitation of either action. Communicative signals might be particularly suitable in segmenting non-salient actions that would otherwise be perceived as part of another action or as non-intentional. These results provide evidence of the importance of ostensive signals at event boundaries in scaffolding children's learning.

Highlights

We investigated this hypothesis by presenting 18month-old children (N=60) with short action sequences consisting of toy animals either hopping or sliding across a board into a house, but interrupting this two-step sequence either (a) using an ostensive signal as a segmentation cue, (b) using a non-ostensive segmentation cue, and (c) without additional segmentation information between the actions
In the following study we investigate whether children use a social signal that is traditionally seen as an ostensive signal to segment an action stream by directly comparing the effect of a social marker, a non-social marker and a baseline condition without a boundary marker in segmenting a short action sequence
22 SOCIAL SIGNALS SEGMENT ACTIONS IN TODDLERS this, we do not find such an effect for the non-communicatively marked control condition. These results provide support for the hypothesis that communicative signals help children segment action sequences, but these effects are only observable in less salient actions

Summary

Introduction

Caregivers support children’s learning of novel information using a wide range of behavioural adaptations and social signals. Parents’ modifications of child directed actions have been studied without direct reference to how these adaptations may contribute to the segmentation of action sequences. There are a number of recent findings, that suggest that communicative signals may contribute to the segmentation of event sequences, and may be important for children’s action learning. We tested whether 18month-old children can use a brief exposure to a communicative signal to segment an action sequence and subsequently adjust which parts of the action sequence they imitate

Results

Discussion

Conclusion