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Question
Does doubling exposure increase 12-, 15-, 18-, and 21-month-old's ability to imitate from a video demonstration?
What did we do?
On the first day, 12-, 15-, 18-, and 21-month-olds watched either a 30-second live or a 60-second video demo of our rattle and animal games. The demos showed a three-step action for each game. We then showed the babies the actual toys the same day, for 12-month-olds, or the next day, for the older infants. When we showed them the toys, we simply wanted to see if they would copy the actions shown during the original demonstration. We then compared babies who had seen a demonstration (live or video) to babies who had no demonstration (baseline). If babies who saw either demo did more actions than the baseline babies, we can say that they have imitated our demo. Further, if babies who saw the video demo performed as many actions as babies who saw the live demo, we can say that imitation from television is equal to imitation from a live demo for our toys.
What did we find?
We found that 15-, 18-, and 21-month-olds were able to imitate as well from video as from a live demonstration after doubling their exposure. Furthermore, this imitation behavior was significantly above their baseline behaviors. For the 15-, 18-, and 21-month-olds, doubling the exposure to the demonstrations of the rattle and animal games increased imitation. The imitation scores of 21-month-olds when exposed to the video demonstration three times, which is equal to the live exposure, lagged significantly behind the live demonstration scores, but their imitation scores were significantly improved upon seeing the video demonstration six times. (see Fig. 1). For 12-month-olds, the story is a bit different. On our animal toy, the game just seemed to be too difficult, with infants in both live and video groups performing poorly (see Fig. 2, right set of bars). We reasoned that 12-month-olds might need more time to learn the game. However, after doubling the live demo to 6 times, their performance on the animal toy was still poor compared to baseline. This finding suggests that the animal toy was simply too large and unwieldy for 12-month-olds to manipulate. This concern led us to try the game with smaller animal toys. But even with the miniature version of the animal toy, we again found that babies do not imitate the game (see Fig. 2, purple solid bar). From this, we wanted to see if the animal game was inherently too difficult given their motor skills at this point in development, so we tried the study with only the rattle. We found that 12-month-olds can imitate the rattle behavior from a video demonstration after 24 hours after seeing the demonstration twice. Doubling exposure for the rattle and animal toys removes the difference between the live and video groups for all ages. Infants as young as 12-months can imitate from television given the appropriate task.
Conclusions
This study has practical applications for both television producers and parents. As producers develop children's educational programming, it is beneficial for them to know that repetition of actions and episodes may enhance learning. This may guide them as they aim to create programs that supplement learning inside and outside of the home. For parents, this study shows how small changes can enhance babies' learning. As with all learning and development, there may be practical steps we, as adults, can take to enhance learning, such as increasing exposure to a toy or game, especially when the game is new. In this study increasing a demonstration from 30 to 60 seconds dramatically increased imitation from television by 15-, 18-, and 21-month-olds and allowed even 12-month-olds to imitate from television.
Future Directions
We are investigating the ability of infants to copy a puppet game. We have added interesting sound effects to our puppet game to make the video demonstration more like the TV that infants often encounter (see Cartoon Sound Effects study). Finally, we are asking parents about what they have noticed about their babies' interaction with television. As a result of parental feedback, we are currently observing babies attention to a popular infant video Baby Mozart. We will let you know the results of these and other studies soon, so please come back to the website if you are interested in reading more.

We would like to extend our thanks to all parents and babies who have participated. Without your generosity, there would be no findings. If you are interested in learning more about our studies, please contact us and we will be sure to get back to you. We are always looking for new participants to be involved and for current participants to be involved again.

 
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