Infant Learning and Development Laboratory

How do young children learn from natural, everyday adult instruction?

Young children encounter new objects like toys every day. How do caregivers help their children learn to use these objects? In this study, caregivers taught their 2-year-olds to put together a set of new toys. We then tested children to see what they had learned from interacting with their caregivers. We found that children learned more when they were more active with the toys while caregivers taught them: Children’s active experience was central for learning. Caregivers supported their children’s activity by providing instructions and praise. Active experience is important for learning.

Publication:
Brezack, N., Radovanovic, M., & Woodward, A. (2021). Everyday interactions support toddlers’ learning of conventional actions on artifacts. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 210, 105201.

What types of instruction help young children learn to use objects?

 To follow up on the previous study, we tested whether formal instructions from an experimenter would similarly help children learn. We were curious whether active or observational experience would help children learn. In this study, an experimenter taught 2-year-olds to assemble new toys in an active style (where children put together the toys themselves) or an observational style (where children watched the experimenter put together the toys). We found that both styles of instruction helped children learn to put together the toys. But, when we tested children’s memory for the toys one year later, children remembered the toys they learned in the active style better than the ones they learned observationally. Active experience during learning is central for children’s long-term memory.

Publication:
Brezack, N., Pan, S., Chandler, J., & Woodward, A. (in preparation). Toddlers’ action learning and memory from active and observed instruction.

How does toy design support children’s learning?

 Toy design can affect how caregivers and children interact with toys, and how children learn from toys. Across both previous studies, we looked at caregiver-child interactions using three different types of toys. The toys had different designs: on some toys, it was obvious how to put the pieces together, but on others, it was less obvious. We found that on toys that were more straightforward, children didn’t need much help from their caregivers to put the toys together. On toys that were less obvious, caregivers helped their children more. Children’s active experience with the toys helped them learn, supported by the toy design and help from their caregivers.

 Publication:
Brezack, N. & Woodward, A. (in preparation). Teaching to the toy: Social and structural supports of toddlers’ conventional action learning.

How do exploration and instruction support children’s problem solving?

When children learn new things, sometimes they can figure everything out on their own by exploring, but other times, adults can help children learn by teaching them. In this study, we tested how 6-year-olds learned the rules in a new problem-solving game. Some children explored before receiving instruction, others were instructed without exploring first, and some explored without instruction. We found that all the children who were instructed learned the rules of the game. But, children who explored before instruction could transfer the rules they learned to new problems. Exploration before instruction is helpful for children to apply what they learn to new contexts.

Publication:
Radovanovic, M., Brezack, N., Shneidman, L., & Woodward, A. (in preparation). Exploration before instruction supports children’s rule generalization.

Similarity begets liking. Birds of a feather flock together. These idioms display a fundamental part of the human social world: people who are similar to each other tend to affiliate. We are exploring whether infants use specific types of similarity to reason about social relationships: similarities that mark social group. For instance, the foods people eat, and the languages people speak may serve as robust markers social category. Thus, we are interested in whether infants think two people who like the same foods, or speak the same language might be members of the same social group. However, other types of similarity (like wearing the same color shirt) may be less likely to mark social group, so we are asking whether infants view these trivial similarities differently.

Past research has found that infants look longer at events they find unexpected than at events they expect to happen. So, in some studies we introduce infants to people who are similar to each other, or different from each other and then use each infants’ looking time to ask whether they expect those people to affiliate with each other or not. In other studies we ask whether infants expect that people who affiliate with each other to be similar to one another, and whether infants think that people who are similar to each other on dimension will be similar to each other on another dimension.

Publications:

Liberman, Z., Kinzler, K. D., & Woodward, A. L. (2014). Friends or foes: Infants use shared evaluations to infer others’ social relationships. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143(3), 966-971.

Hamlin, J. K., Mahajan, N., Liberman, Z., & Wynn, K. (2013). Not like me = bad: Infants prefer those who harm dissimilar others. Psychological Science, 24(4), 589-594.

The ability to learn and remember social information is important for human development. This is particularly true in infancy and early childhood, when learning about things like cultural norms, language, and moral values is dependent on the information provided by social partners. This project focuses on the social contexts that form the foundation for early learning and memory. How and when do children choose which type of person to learn from? How does early social experience shape this selective learning? Are social situations fundamentally better for learning and memory early in life? By combining behavioral, eye-tracking, and electrophysiological (event-related potential; ERP) methodologies, this project examines the importance and intricacies of social learning across early development.

Preferences in Early Learning

Like adults, children often prefer to interact with others who are more similar to themselves. However, the extent to which these preferences influence learning across early development is still widely unknown. If children prefer individuals with certain traits (such as the language they speak), does that mean they are also more likely to select them as sources of information? Can previous experience with people who are “different” (e.g., those who speak a different language) influence how likely children are to learn from others who are different in the future? Using imitation, eye tracking, and toy choice methods, we can examine how likely children are to interact with and learn from people who are similar or different to themselves.

Learning in the Presence of Others

This project goes beyond the examination of variations within social situations (a.k.a, whether children choose to learn from one person over another) and focuses more directly on whether learning in the presence of social partners is fundamentally different than learning in their absence. We know that the presence of a person changes how children react to things “in the moment”. For example, when a person points or looks at something, it directs the child’s attention in a certain direction. However, it is not yet clear whether the presence of a person actually alters what children remember after a long period of time. Do children remember more about an event when they see a person in it as opposed to seeing the same event without a person? This project uses eye tracking and object-reconstruction techniques to examine the influence of people on memory in infancy and childhood.

Publications:

Howard, L.H., Henderson, A.M.E, Carrazza, C. & Woodward, A. (in press). Infants’ and young children’s imitation of linguistic ingroup and outgroup informants. Child Development.

Howard, L.H. Carrazza, C. & Woodward, A. L. (2014, online). Neighborhood linguistic diversity predicts infants’ social learning. Cognition, 133(2), 474-479.

How do children learn from gesture?

When we talk, we use our hands to provide information. Gestures, or symbolic hand movements, can draw attention in an instructional context, add emphasis, or provide content through their representational form. In fact, research with school-aged children shows that children are more likely to learn from a lesson if the teacher gestures during instruction. Similarly, children who themselves are encouraged or instructed to gesture during a lesson are more likely to learn new ideas.

When are young children first able to learn from gesture?

But is gesture equally helpful for younger children? Although babies point and understand simple gestures, here we are exploring when and how very young children interpret complex symbolic gestures. We contrast learning from gesture with learning from action. Actions, like gestures are hand movements, but unlike gestures, actions interact with objects in the real world. Babies and young children are quite good at interpreting actions on objects.

How do children interpret actions (i.e., goal-directed movements that interact with objects) differently from gestures (i.e., representational movements produced in the air)?

Here, we consider how babies and young children think about gestures. By better understanding how young children think about and learn from gestures, we gain insight into how the young mind interprets and analyses different forms of movement.

Publications:

Novack, M., Goldin-Meadow, S., & Woodward, A, (under review). Learning from Gesture: How early does it happen?

Novack, M., Congdon, E., Hemani-Lopez, N., & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2014). From action to abstraction: Using the hands to learn math. Psychological Science, 25. 903-910. doi: 10.1177/0956797613518351

Novack, M., Henderson, A., & Woodward, A. (2014).Twelve-month-olds Generalize Novel Signed-Labels, but not Object Preferences Across Individuals Journal of Cognition and Development. 15(4). 539-550. doi:10.1080/15248372.2013.782460

Being able to infer what other people might be thinking is an essential skill for successfully navigating social interactions, allowing us to explain and predict others’ behavior and helping guide our interactions with social partners. The basic beliefs people have about how others’ minds work is called “theory of mind,” and developing theory of mind skills is an important and well-studied component of children’s social cognitive development.

We are interested in how young children learn to use a person’s actions and behavior to reason about what that person might be thinking, and how they can use this information to anticipate their social partners’ future thoughts and behavior. We have been looking at these questions specifically in the context of children’s understanding of others’ preferences – what people like and dislike.

In one line of studies, we investigate children’s ability to reason about a character’s preferences by tracking the statistical regularities in the character’s choices. When children observe a character repeatedly choosing an uncommon toy from a box containing a lot of one kind of toy and very few of another, do children infer that the puppet likes this uncommon toy? We also explore how children’s interpretations are affected by the way the character’s choices are introduced by the experimenter and children’s own theories about how preferences work, as well as how children’s inferences change from preschool age through early childhood.

Once children know what a person likes, what other kinds of inferences can they make about that person? We have been exploring whether two-year-old children think a person’s preferences will transfer to new situations and older children’s ability to generalize a character’s preferences to other objects, points in time, and characters.

Through this work, we can gain insight into the kinds of information and processes children use when learning about others’ mental states, and how they use these skills to become successful navigators of their social world.

Publication:

Garvin, L. & Woodward, A. L. (in press). Verbal framing of statistical evidence drives children’s preference inferences. Cognition.

How do infants make sense of the actions of others?

Over the first year of life, infants’ motor skills develop rapidly. Alongside these impressive developments in motor skill, infants make huge strides in social cognition. Research from our lab shows that infants’ ability to produce actions informs their ability to understand those actions when they later see someone else acting. By combining behavioral, eye-tracking, and electrophysiological (EEG) methodologies, this project examines how the motor system could inform social cognition.

What brain systems are involved in action understanding and how do these brain systems develop?

In one line of studies, we examine the type of information that infants use to make predictions about the actions of others. In these studies, infants observe videos of a person reaching for objects on an eye-tracking computer monitor. Sometimes the infant observes a person using an appropriate handshape to grip the object, other times the handshape is incorrect for the object shown. We’re interested in whether infants recruit their own knowledge about how to reach for objects and how much attention infants pay to information about how you move your hands.

How does the motor system inform developments in social cognition?

A second line of studies, investigates the brain networks involved in understanding the actions of others. Research has shown that the motor system, the part of the brain that we activate when we perform actions ourselves, is also active when we watch other people perform actions. Recruiting the motor system when observing actions is thought to be involved in action understanding. However, there are still many questions about how this brain network might function when motor skill and the social cognitive abilities are first developing. In a recent study, we showed that the more infants recruit this brain system, the more likely they are to imitate others’ actions. This provides a link between the brain’s motor system and infant social behavior in the first year of life. We’re currently investigating whether this brain system is linked to other social behaviors in 9- to 10-month-old infants. Together these studies will help us understand the role that the motor system plays in early social cognition.

Publications:

Filippi, C., Cannon, E.N., Fox, N., Thorpe, S., Ferrari, P., Woodward, A. (under review). Neural mirroring predicts goal analysis in 7-month-old infants.

Filippi, C. & Woodward (2014). Mirroring and the ontogeny of social cognition In P.F. Ferrari & G. Rizzolatti (Eds.) Mirror Neurons: Twenty years after their discovery. Oxford University Press.

Krogh-Jespersen, S., Filippi, C., & Woodward, A.L. (2014). A developmental perspective on action and social cognition. Commentary, Behvioral and Brain Sciences, 37(2), 208-209

Do children learn equally from overheard interactions and direct interactions?

Is directed communication a universal feature of all early learning environments or is it specific to certain communities?

Children depend on others to learn language, to learn how to act in culturally appropriate ways, and to learn to engage with the physical environment effectively. A great deal of current research has focused on identifying the aspects of social interaction that foster these kinds of learning. Some theorists have proposed that child-directed interactions are critical. In these interactions, the adult and child engage together in visual attention while the adult directly addresses the child to communicated relevant information (e.g., the name of an object, or the proper use of an artifact). These interactions have been argued to be the critical foundation from which human social learning and culture emerge, but directed interactions are uncommon in many children’s lives. The National Science Foundations Development and Learning Sciences program supports this project.

We are exploring the presence of child directed communication, and its role in information early learning for children from two cultural communities: A Yucatec Mayan community in Southeastern Mexico, where past research has shown that children have many opportunities to observe others, and a U.S. community, where children may regularly experience directed interactions with caregivers. We are investigating the contexts under which children learn actions form other people.  Children will learn about some new toys from either someone directly teaching them or they will observe other people acting on these toys. We are also exploring how children effectively learn words from others where we will show children some new objects and label them either while directly addressing the child or addressing another individual.

Publications:

Shneidman, L., Todd, R. & Woodward, A.L. (in press). Why do child-directed interactions support imitative learning in young children. PlosOne.

Shneidman, L., Sootsman-Buresh, J., Shimpi, P., Knight-Schwartz, J., & Woodward, A.L. (2009). Social experience, social attention, and word learning in an overhearing paradigm. Language Learning and Development. 5, 4, 266-281.

Shneidman, L. A. and Goldin-Meadow, S. (2012), Language input and acquisition in a Mayan village: how important is directed speech?. Developmental Science, 15: 659–673.

Children learn a great deal from their interactions with social partners, including language and cultural norms, among other important social cognitive abilities. Learning from others requires at least two kinds of abilities in the child – the ability to represent others’ actions as intentional and the ability to use this knowledge very quickly in real time. In the first year of life, converging evidence from passive experimental methods suggests that young infants have an understanding of others’ intentions and goals (Guajardo & Woodward, 2004; Woodward, 1998, 1999); however, these same infants may not appear as sophisticated in their knowledge of others during naturalistic interactions that require fast responses.

Between 12 and 24 months of age, infants show increasing skill in fine-grained social interactive abilities (social competence).This project explores the possibility that the difference in social competence between years 1 and 2 is driven by infants becoming more adept at recruiting their knowledge of others’ intentions quickly during social interactions, which allows them to produce rapid appropriate responses to others.

Across a number of studies, this project examines how skilled infants are at integrating social knowledge about others (social competence) and whether their speed in responding (which we call their Goal Prediction Speed) aids in their development of social skills that are evident in the second year of life. Social competence skills include understanding collaborative interactions, perspective-taking, and imitation among other abilities. This project also examines whether experience influences infants’ ability to recruit their knowledge of others to generate fast appropriate social responses. The current project sheds light on infants’ developing social competence, a multidimensional ability that encompasses social, cognitive, and behavioral skills that allow infants to effectively navigate their social world.

Publications:

Krogh-Jespersen, S., Liberman, Z. & Woodward, A. L. (in press). Think fast! The relationship between goal prediction speed and social competence in infants.Developmental Science

Krogh-Jespersen, S., Filippi, C., & Woodward, A.L. (2014). A developmental perspective on action and social cognition. Commentary, Behvioral and Brain Sciences, 37(2), 208-209.

Krogh-Jespersen, S., & Woodward, A.L. (2014). Making smart social judgments takes time: Infants’ recruitment of goal information when generating action predictions.PLosOne 9(5): e98085. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0098085