Infants Learn What They Want to Learn: Responding to Infant Pointing Leads to Superior Learning
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Infants Learn What They Want to Learn : Responding to Infant Pointing Leads to Superior Learning. / Begus, Katarina; Gliga, Teodora; Southgate, Victoria.
I: PLoS ONE, Bind 9, Nr. 10, 108817, 07.10.2014.Publikation: Bidrag til tidsskrift › Tidsskriftartikel › Forskning › fagfællebedømt
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Infants Learn What They Want to Learn
T2 - Responding to Infant Pointing Leads to Superior Learning
AU - Begus, Katarina
AU - Gliga, Teodora
AU - Southgate, Victoria
PY - 2014/10/7
Y1 - 2014/10/7
N2 - The majority of current developmental models prioritise a pedagogical approach to knowledge acquisition in infancy, in which infants play a relatively passive role as recipients of information. In view of recent evidence, demonstrating that infants use pointing to express interest and solicit information from adults, we set out to test whether giving the child the leading role in deciding what information to receive leads to better learning. Sixteen-month-olds were introduced to pairs of novel objects and, once they had pointed to an object, were shown a function for either the object they had chosen, or the object they had ignored. Ten minutes later, infants replicated the functions of chosen objects significantly more than those of un-chosen objects, despite having been equally visually attentive during demonstrations on both types of objects. These results show that offering information in response to infants' communicative gestures leads to superior learning (Experiment 1) and that this difference in performance is due to learning being facilitated when infants' pointing was responded to, not hindered when their pointing was ignored (Experiment 2), highlighting the importance of infants' own active engagement in acquiring information.
AB - The majority of current developmental models prioritise a pedagogical approach to knowledge acquisition in infancy, in which infants play a relatively passive role as recipients of information. In view of recent evidence, demonstrating that infants use pointing to express interest and solicit information from adults, we set out to test whether giving the child the leading role in deciding what information to receive leads to better learning. Sixteen-month-olds were introduced to pairs of novel objects and, once they had pointed to an object, were shown a function for either the object they had chosen, or the object they had ignored. Ten minutes later, infants replicated the functions of chosen objects significantly more than those of un-chosen objects, despite having been equally visually attentive during demonstrations on both types of objects. These results show that offering information in response to infants' communicative gestures leads to superior learning (Experiment 1) and that this difference in performance is due to learning being facilitated when infants' pointing was responded to, not hindered when their pointing was ignored (Experiment 2), highlighting the importance of infants' own active engagement in acquiring information.
KW - CURIOSITY
KW - MOTHERS
KW - GAZE
U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0108817
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0108817
M3 - Journal article
VL - 9
JO - PLoS ONE
JF - PLoS ONE
SN - 1932-6203
IS - 10
M1 - 108817
ER -
ID: 332688833