Posted on 12/06/2007 8:23:34 AM PST by blam
Humans Appear Hardwired To Learn By 'Over-Imitation'
ScienceDaily (Dec. 6, 2007) — Children learn by imitating adults--so much so that they will rethink how an object works if they observe an adult taking unnecessary steps when using that object, according to a new Yale study.
Adult retrieves turtle from puzzle box as part of experiment that determined children "over-imitate" adult behavior. (Credit: Yale Department of Psychology)
"Even when you add time pressure, or warn the children not to do the unnecessary actions, they seem unable to avoid reproducing the adult's irrelevant actions," said Derek Lyons, doctoral candidate, developmental psychology, and first author of the study. "They have already incorporated the actions into their idea of how the object works."
Learning by imitation occurs from the simplest preverbal communication to the most complex adult expertise. It is the basis for much of our success as a species, but the benefits are less clear in instances of "over-imitation," where children copy behavior that is not needed, Lyons said.
It has been theorized that children over-imitate just to fit in, or out of habit. The Yale team found in this study that children follow the adults' steps faithfully to the point where they actually change their mind about how an object functions.
The study included three-to-five-year-old children who engaged in a series of exercises. In one exercise, the children could see a dinosaur toy through a clear plastic box. The researcher used a sequence of irrelevant and relevant actions to retrieve the toy, such as tapping the lid of the jar with a feather before unscrewing the lid.
The children then were asked which actions were silly and which were not. They were praised when they pinpointed the actions that had no value in retrieving the toy. The idea was to teach the children that the adult was unreliable and that they should ignore his unnecessary actions.
Later the children watched adults retrieve a toy turtle from a box using needless steps. When asked to do the task themselves, the children over-imitated, despite their prior training to ignore irrelevant actions by the adults.
"What of all of this means," Lyons said, "is that children's ability to imitate can actually lead to confusion when they see an adult doing something in a disorganized or inefficient way. Watching an adult doing something wrong can make it much harder for kids to do it right."
Journal reference: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: online publication week of December 3, 2007 (doi/10.1073/pnas.0704452104)
Co-authors include Andrew Young of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Frank Keil of Yale, who was the senior author.
Adapted from materials provided by Yale University.
This explains teenage drivers.......
And karaoke bars...
So act like grown-ups around the children and you will have less discipline problems.
Monkey see, monkey sing......
Any parent knows this. Watching your kids repeat silly or extraneous things you do is one of the cutest and heart warming experiences.
Last year in Costco I saw a grandfather buying 2 karaoke machines with a wicked grin on his face.
A few years back, a co-worker bought her daughter, then about 5 years old, a Barbie Jeep to ride in the yard. The little girl loved it and played like any other child would with it. One day, the mother watched her little girl stop in the yard, get out and go tho the front of the little Jeep and open the hood. “What are you doing?” the mother asked.
“Fixing the Jeep like Daddy!” she said, whereupon she took out a little screwdriver, said some cuss words and threw the tool on the ground..............
LOL. Yah. My toddler daughter says “Hmmmm, let’s see” and taps her chin as she looks at things.
Hate you in-laws? Buy their kid a drum for Christmas!.......
Wow, that would be interesting to see!
ROFL!
Kids “over-imitate” because they don’t understand why certain things need to be done. At that young age it makes evolutionary sense to just follow older people.
When they get older, they will understand. Until then, it’s good for them to just imitate a responsible adult. Letting kids do what they want to do is sometimes not a good thing.
Kids won’t always learn what you’re teaching, but they’ll always learn more than you expect.
The truth emerges!
When my daughter was about 4 or 5 (21 now) she was very curious about everything. She’d pick up something and ask, “What is this?” followed by “What is it for?”
One day I was working on the car, re-packing the wheel bearings. She picked up the can of grease and asked her two questions. To the second I answered, “It stops things from making noise.”
The new puppy we had gotten her was barking and jumping on her to get her to play.
I continued to work and a few minutes later I noticed the puppy wallowing around in the grass. She had taken some of the grease and put it on the dog’s head, “To get it to stop making noise.” which it did........
LOL!
Thank god for Yale!
Drum sets are good too.
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