Abstract
We used the Re-enactment of intention paradigm to investigate whether children would re-enact what an adult intended to do in a video presentation as they do when presented with a live demonstration (Meltzoff in Dev Psychol 31(5):838–850, 1995). Unlike the 18-month-old infants studied by Meltzoff (Dev Psychol 31(5):838–850, 1995), the 18- and 24-month-olds in the current study did not frequently imitate unsuccessful goal-directed actions presented in a video model. Children who performed better in the task also tended to share more of their attention with the experimenter during co-viewing of the video. Performance on the Re-enactment of intention task was positively related to categorization score, an independent measure of cognitive functioning.
Notes
We noticed in a pilot study that children became bored while observing a video of an adult who watched an object for more than 10 s without doing anything else.
References
Anderson DR, Pempek T (2005) Television and very young children. American Behavioral Scientist 48:505–522
Barr R, Hayne H (1999) Developmental changes in imitation from television during infancy. Child Dev 70:1067–1081
Behne T, Carpenter M, Call J, Tomasello M (2005) Unwilling versus unable: infants’ understanding of intentional action. Dev Psychol 41:328–337
Bellagamba F, Tomasello M (1999) Re-enacting intended acts: comparing 12- and 18-month-olds. Infant Behav Dev 22(2):277–282
Bernier A, Carlson SM, Whipple N (2010) From external regulation to self-regulation: early parenting precursors of young children’s executive functioning. Child Dev 81(1):326–339
Brandone AC, Wellman HM (2009) You can’t always get what you want. Infants understand failed goal-directed actions. Psychol Sci 20:85–91
Camaioni L, Perucchini P, Bellagamba F, Colonnesi C (2004) The role of declarative pointing in developing a theory of mind. Infancy 5(3):291–308
Carlson SM, Moses LJ (2001) Individual differences in inhibitory control and children’s theory of mind. Child Dev 72:1032–1053
Carlson SM, Mandell DJ, Williams L (2004) Executive function and theory of mind: stability and prediction from ages 2 to 3. Dev Psychol 40(6):1105–1122
Carpenter M, Akhtar N, Tomasello M (1998) Fourteen- through 18-month-old infants differentially imitate intentional and accidental actions. Infant Behav Dev 21(2):315–330
Caselli MC, Casadio P (1995) Il primo vocabolario del bambino (PVB). Franco Angeli, Milano
Cleveland A, Striano T (2008) Televised social interaction and object learning in 14- and 18-month-old infants. Infant Behav Dev 31:326–331
Colonnesi C, Rieffe C, Koops W, Perucchini P (2008) Precursors of a theory of mind: a longitudinal study. British J Dev Psychol 26:561–577
DeLoache JS (1991) Symbolic functioning in very young children: understanding of pictures and models. Child Dev 62(4):736–752
Fidler AE, Zack E, Barr R (2010) Television viewing patterns in 6- to 18-month-olds: the role of caregiver-infant interactional quality. Infancy 15(2):176–196
Hayne H, Herbert J, Simcock G (2003) Imitation from television by 24- and 30-month-olds. Dev Sci 6:254–261
Hughes C, Ensor R (2007) Executive function and theory of mind: predictive relations from age 2 to 4. Dev Psychol 43(6):1447–1459
Itakura S, Ishida H, Kanda T, Shimada Y, Ishiguro H, Lee K (2008) How to build an intentional android: infants’ imitation of a robot’s goal-directed actions. Infancy 13(5):519–532
Johnson SC, Booth A, O’Hearn K (2001) Inferring the goals of a nonhuman agent. Cogn Dev 16(1):637–656
Kristen S, Sodian B, Thoermer C, Perst H (2011) Infants’ joint attention skills predict toddlers’ emerging mental state language. Dev Psychol 47(5):1207–1219
Meltzoff AN (1995) Understanding the intentions of others: re-enactment of intended acts by 18-month-old children. Dev Psychol 31(5):838–850
Mundy P, Delgado C, Block J, Venezia M, Hogan A, Seibert J (2003) A manual for the abridged early social communicative scales (ESCS). Available at http://www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/mindinstitute/ourteam/faculty_staff/escs.pdf
Nielsen M, Simcock G, Jenkins L (2008) The effect of social engagement on 24-month-olds’ imitation from live and televised models. Dev Sci 11:722–731
Olineck KM, Poulin-Dubois D (2005) Infants’ ability to distinguish between intentional and accidental actions and its relation to internal state language. Infancy 8:91–100
Olineck KM, Poulin-Dubois D (2009) Infants’ understanding of intention from 10 to 14 months: interrelation among violation of expectancy and imitation tasks. Infant Behav Dev 32:404–415
Perner J, Lang B, Kloo B (2002) Theory of mind and self-control: more than a common problem of inhibition. Child Dev 73:752–767
Poulin-Dubois D, Yott J (in press) Executive function and theory of mind understanding in 18-month-olds: a two-way affair? Psychologie Francaise
Seehagen S, Herbert JS (2011) Infant imitation from televised peer and adult models. Infancy 16(2):113–136
Striano T, Tomasello M, Rochat P (2001) Social and object support for early symbolic play. Dev Sci 4:442–455
Strouse GA, Troseth GL (2008) Don’t try this at home: toddlers’ imitation of new skills from people on video. J Exp Child Psychol 101:262–280
Suddendorf T, Simcock G, Nielsen M (2007) Visual self-recognition and live videos: evidence for a developmental asynchrony. Cogn Dev 22:185–196
Troseth GL, DeLoache JS (1998) The medium can obscure the message: young children’s understanding of video. Child Dev 69:950–965
Troseth GL, Saylor MM, Archer AH (2006) Young children’s use of video as a source of socially relevant information. Child Dev 77:786–799
Zack E, Barr R, Gerhardstein P, Dickerson K, Meltzoff AN (2009) Infant imitation from television using novel touch screen technology. British J Dev Psychol 27:13–26
Acknowledgments
This research was supported by a grant to the first author from the Italian Ministero dell’Istruzione, dell’Università e della Ricerca (programma PRIN 2008N9KF5K). Portions of this research were presented at the 15th European Conference on Developmental Psychology (Bergen, Norway, August 2011). We thank Diane Poulin-Dubois for helpful suggestions on a previous draft of the manuscript. We are grateful to parents and children who participated in this study and to the directors and all the staff of the daycares in Rome where children were recruited (Baby 2000, Castello, Cocco e Drilli, La Farfalla, Luba 1, Luba 2, Piccolo Pinocchio, Pinocchio, Principe Ranocchio, Sophia). We dedicate this article in memoriam to Professor Maria D’Alessio who very much encouraged us to pursue this study.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Bellagamba, F., Laghi, F., Lonigro, A. et al. Re-enactment of intended acts from a video presentation by 18- and 24-month-old children. Cogn Process 13, 381–386 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-012-0518-0
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-012-0518-0