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Can I see that again? Puppet Game
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This study is based on the same empirical premise as the Rattle and Animal Toy study (see Can I see that again? Rattle and Animal)
Click here for PDF file of Age-related changes in deferred imitation from television by 6- to 18-month-olds.
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Question
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Does doubling the exposure to the puppet game increase 6-, 12-, 15-, and 18-month-olds' ability to imitate from a video demonstration?
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What did we do?
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On the first day, 6-month-olds watched either a 60-second live or 120-second video demonstration of our puppet game. The 12-, 15-, and 18-month-olds saw either a 30-second live or a 60-second video demonstration of the puppet game. The demos showed a three-step action for the puppet. The next day, we came back and showed the babies the actual puppet. When we showed the puppet, we wanted to see if they would copy the actions shown during the original demonstration. We then compared babies who had seen the 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 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 puppet game.
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What did we find?
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We found that 6-month-olds were able to imitate from television when the number of demonstrations was the same as the number of demonstrations required to imitate a live model. The 12-month-olds were able to imitate from the video and live demonstrations after doubling their exposure to the puppet game. The 15-month-olds were able to imitate from television after quadrupling the exposure to televsion. This imitation behavior was significantly above the baseline behaviors. For the 18-month-olds, doubling the exposure to the puppet game did not significantly increase their imitation from the baseline behaviors. (see Fig. 1).
6-month-olds who saw the video 6 times (which is equivalent to the number of times they saw the demonstration live) were not able to imitate from television.
These findings are surprising. First, even 6-month-olds can imitate and there was no difference between their imitation of a live and video model. Second, for older infants repetition increased their ability to imitate from television.
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What's Next?
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The big question now is why did repetition work and why is imitation from television so difficult. We are currently conducting the button box study to try and answer this question.
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Abstract from published paper
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During the second year of life, infants exhibit a video deficit effect. That is, they learn significantly less from a televised demonstration than they learn from a live demonstration. We predicted that repeated exposure to televised demonstrations would increase imitation from television, thereby reducing the video deficit effect. Independent groups of 6- to 18-month-olds were exposed to live or videotaped demonstrations of target actions. Imitation of the target actions was measured 24 hrs later. The video segment duration was twice that of the live presentation. Doubling exposure ameliorated the video deficit effect for 12-month-olds but not for 15- and 18-month-olds. The 6-month-olds imitated from television but did not demonstrate a video deficit effect at all, learning equally well from a live and video demonstration. Findings are discussed in terms of the perceptual impoverishment theory and the dual representation theory.
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Published Findings
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Click here for PDF file of Age-related changes in deferred imitation from television by
6- to 18-month-olds.
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Back to findings
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