7 Mar
2011
7 Mar
'11
1:45 p.m.
The next talk in the CDC seminar series will be given by:
Sabina Pauen, University of Heidelberg
Date: March 9, 2011, 5 PM
Location: Cognitive Development Center at CEU, Hattyú u. 14, 3rd floor
*Learning categories from observing others - A case of natural pedagogy?*
Abstract: Can infants understand that another person expresses interest for
a specific category of objects (rather than for an individual exemplar)? My
talk will provide evidence suggesting that this is the case.
All experiments to be presented follow the same general paradigm: An actor
is sitting behind two small boxes located left and right in front of her. On
each box, a 3-D object is placed. On the one side, this object represents an
animal and on the other side, it represents a vehicle. (These two global
categories were chosen because we already know that even 4 months olds can
discriminate them) The actor turns towards one of the two objects and looks
at it with an interested facial expression. Infants see a total of 11
different scenes that follow this script. In each scene, a new pair of
exemplars is presented, with the side of the animal / vehicle
counterbalanced across trials. On the first 10 trials, the actor always
turns towards the same kind of object, but at test, she turns toward the
exemplar of the contrasting category. To check whether infants realized that
the person changed the category of interest during the last trial, we
compared the mean looking time on the 10th and the 11th trial. A significant
increase in looking time was interpreted as indicating that infants realized
the change in category of interest.
Using this paradigm, we tested infants ranging from 7 to 12 months,
analyzing not only their looking time at test but also their looking
patterns (i.e. gaze following, checking). Furthermore, we systematically
manipulated social cues indicating the actors’ interest (i.e. contrasting
scenes involving gaze information only with scenes including reaching
behavior as well). We also ran a study replacing the actor by a desk-lamp
turning towards the target and flashing it. With respect to the theory of
natural pedagogy, two further studies seem of special interest: In one
experiment, the actor did not establish eye-contact with the child before
turning towards the target. In the other study, two actors were presented
simultaneously, each focusing on one specific category, but exchanging their
focus of interest at test.
In my talk, I will describe the above-mentioned studies in more detail. In
addition, implications of our findings for the theory of natural pedagogy as
well as some promising lines of future research involving our paradigm will
be discussed.
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