Humour production may enhance observational learning of a new tool-use action in 18-month-old infants

Many studies have shown that making children laugh enhances certain cognitive capacities such as attention, motivation, perception and/or memory, which in turn enhance learning. However, no study thus far has investigated whether laughing has an effect on learning earlier in infancy. The goal of this study was to see whether using humour with young infants in a demonstration of a complex tool-use task can enhance their learning. Fifty-three 18-month-old infants participated in this study and were included either in a humorous or a control demonstration group. In both groups infants observed an adult using a tool to retrieve an out-of-reach toy. What differed between groups was that in the humorous demonstration group, instead of playing with the toy, the adult threw it on the floor immediately after retrieval. The results show that infants who laughed at the demonstration in the humorous demonstration group reproduced significantly more frequent target actions than infants who did not laugh and those in the control group. This effect is discussed with regard to individual differences in terms of temperament and social capacities as well as positive emotion and dopamine release.     

Object retrieval through observational learning in 8- to 18-month-old infants

Observational learning was studied in 8-, 10-, 12-, 15- and 18-month-old infants. Using object-retrieval tasks of relatively comparable difficulty for each age group, we showed that between 10 and 12 months there is a change in the capacity to learn a new skill by observation.     

Contexts of a person's prior intentions facilitate observational learning in 2.5-year-old children

We examined whether contexts suggesting an actor's prior intentions facilitate observational learning in 2.5-year-olds. In Experiment 1, children observed an experimenter handle one box before proceeding to open a second box. In two prior intention conditions, children either watched the experimenter extract a toy from the first box or saw that the box had already been opened. In two no prior intention conditions, children watched the demonstration with only the second box or paired with irrelevant actions upon the first box. Children successfully opened the second box more often in the two prior intention conditions than in the two no prior intention conditions. Experiment 2 investigated stimulus generalization as another explanation for these results. A functionally different trap-tube task served as the pre-demonstration apparatus. Before watching the experimenter open the box, children either saw her extract a toy from the tube with a stick or observed the toy accidentally fall from the opening. In both cases, children opened the box at similar high rates. We discuss children's use of others’ prior intentions or observable outcomes in observational learning.     

Using a bad tool with good intention: young children's imitation of adults' questionable choices

We present three studies exploring 2- to 4-year-olds’ imitation on witnessing a model whose questionable tool use choices suggested her untrustworthiness. In Study 1, children observed the model accidentally select a physically optimal tool for a task and then intentionally reject it for one that was functionally nonaffordant. When asked to perform the task for her, children at all ages ignored the model’s intentional cues and selected the optimal tool. Study 2 found that when the model’s nonaffordant tool choice was emphasized by claims about its design, 3-year-olds increased imitation. They also imitated, as did 2-year-olds, when the model selected a suboptimal rather than nonaffordant tool. The 4-year-olds consistently avoided imitation. Study 3 replicated these findings with new tools and participants. Additional measures indicated that knowledge about artifact design predicted children’s tendency to ignore the model. These results shed light on developmental trends in the social and cognitive functions of imitation.     

Emulation and “overemulation” in the social learning of causally opaque versus causally transparent tool use by 23- and 30-month-olds

We explored whether a rising trend to blindly “overcopy” a model’s causally irrelevant actions between 3 and 5 years of age, found in previous studies, predicts a more circumspect disposition in much younger children. Children between 23 and 30 months of age observed a model use a tool to retrieve a reward from either a transparent or opaque puzzle box. Some of the tool actions were irrelevant to reward retrieval, whereas others were causally necessary. The causal relevance of the tool actions was highly visible in the transparent box condition, allowing the participants to potentially discriminate which actions were necessary. In contrast, the causal efficacy of the tool was hidden in the opaque box condition. When both the 23- and 30-month-olds were presented with either the transparent or opaque box, they were most commonly emulative rather than imitative, performing only the causally necessary actions. This strategy contrasts with the blanket imitation of both causally irrelevant and causally relevant actions witnessed at 3 and 5 years of age in our previous studies. The results challenge a current view of 1- and 2-year-olds as largely “blind imitators”; instead, they show that these young children have a variety of social learning processes available to them. More broadly the emerging patterns of results suggest, rather counterintuitively, that the human species becomes more imitative rather than less imitative with age, in some ways “mindlessly” so.     

Raking it in: the impact of enculturation on chimpanzee tool use

Recent evidence for different tool kits, proposed to be based upon culture-like transmission, have been observed across different chimpanzee communities across Western Africa. In light of these findings, the reported failures by seven captive juvenile chimpanzees tested with 27 tool use tasks (Povinelli 2000) seem enigmatic. Here we report successful performance by a group of nine captive, enculturated chimpanzees, and limited success by a group of six semi-enculturated chimpanzees, on two of the Povinelli tasks, the Flimsy Tool task, and the Hybrid Tool task. All chimpanzees were presented with a rake with a flimsy head and a second rake with a rigid head, either of which could be used to attempt to retrieve a food reward that was out of reach. The rigid rake was constructed such that it had the necessary functional features to permit successful retrieval, while the flimsy rake did not. Both chimpanzee groups in the present experiment selected the functional rigid tool correctly to use during the Flimsy Tool task. All animals were then presented with two “hybrid rakes” A and B, with one half of each rake head constructed from flimsy, non-functional fabric, and the other half of the head was made of wood. Food rewards were placed in front of the rigid side of Rake A and the flimsy side of Rake B. To be successful, the chimps needed to choose the rake that had the reward in front of the rigid side of the rake head. The fully enculturated animals were successful in selecting the functional rake, while the semi-enculturated subjects chose randomly between the two hybrid tools. Compared with findings from Povinelli, whose non-enculturated animals failed both tasks, our results demonstrate that chimpanzees reared under conditions of semi-enculturation could learn to discriminate correctly the necessary tool through trial-and-error during the Flimsy Tool task, but were unable to recognize the functional relationship necessary for retrieving the reward with the “hybrid” rake. In contrast, the enculturated chimpanzees were correct in their choices during both the Flimsy Tool and the Hybrid Tool tasks. These results provide the first empirical evidence for the differential effects of enculturation on subsequent tool use capacities in captive chimpanzees.     

Imitation of hierarchical structure versus component details of complex actions by 3- and 5-year-olds

We investigated developmental changes in the level of information children incorporate into their imitation when a model executes complex, hierarchically organized actions. A total of 57 3-year-olds and 60 5-year-olds participated, watching video demonstrations of an “artificial fruit” box being opened through a complex series of nine different steps. Half of each sample observed the same nine steps performed through either of two different, hierarchically organized procedures, whereas half witnessed differing component action details. Children were found to imitate at both levels but were more likely to copy at the higher hierarchical level than at the level of specific action details. Fidelity to hierarchical organization, but not to the imitation of specific detail, increased with age. However, variation in imitativeness across children at one of these levels did not predict imitativeness at the other level.     

Observational learning of tool use in children: Investigating cultural spread through diffusion chains and learning mechanisms through ghost displays

In the first of two experiments, we demonstrate the spread of a novel form of tool use across 20 “cultural generations” of child-to-child transmission. An experimentally seeded technique spread with 100% fidelity along twice as many “generations” as has been investigated in recent exploratory “diffusion” experiments of this type. This contrasted with only a single child discovering the technique spontaneously in a comparable group tested individually without any model. This study accordingly documents children’s social learning of tool use on a new, population-level scale that characterizes real-world cultural phenomena. In a second experiment, underlying social learning processes were investigated with a focus on the contrast between imitation (defined as copying actions) and emulation (defined as learning from the results of actions only). In two different “ghost” conditions, children were presented with the task used in the first experiment but now operated without sight of an agent performing the task, thereby presenting only the information used in emulation. Children in ghost conditions were less successful than those who had watched a model in action and showed variable matching to what they had seen. These findings suggest the importance of observational learning of complex tool use through imitation rather than only through emulation. Results of the two experiments are compared with those of similar experiments conducted previously with chimpanzees and are discussed in relation to the wider perspective of human culture and the influence of task complexity on social learning.     

Choosing and using tools: Prior experience and task difficulty influence preschoolers’ tool-use strategies

Children's acquisition of tool use abilities is an important part of development but is not yet well understood. This study compares two modes of tool-use learning, observation and individual haptic experience. Two- and 3-year-olds had haptic experience with tools, observed tool use by others, had both haptic and observational experience, or no tool exposure. Their tool choice and use were evaluated across six problem-solving tasks that varied in degree of difficulty. Children learned about tools better by observation than by individual learning through manual exploration. Performance also varied by task difficulty, with more complex tasks proving more difficult. Findings are discussed from cognitive and evolutionary perspectives.     

Imitation of causally opaque versus causally transparent tool use by 3- and 5-year-old children

We investigated whether the tendency to imitate or emulate is influenced by the availability of causal information, and the amount of information available in a display. Three and 5-year-old children were shown by either a live or video model how to obtain a reward from either a clear or an opaque puzzle box. Some of the actions in the sequence were causally relevant to retrieving the reward, whereas others were irrelevant. The clear box made the causally irrelevant actions visible, whereas the opaque box prevented them from being seen. Results indicated that both 3- and 5-year-old children imitated the irrelevant actions regardless of the availability of causal information following a live demonstration. In contrast, the 3-year-olds employed an emulative approach, omitting irrelevant actions, when the information available was degraded in a video demonstration. However, the 5-year-olds were unaffected by the degraded information and employed an imitative approach. We suggest that imitation develops to be such an adaptive human strategy that it may often be employed at the expense of task efficiency.     

Ten-month-olds' selective use of visual dimensions in category learning

There is now general consensus that infants can use several different visual properties as the basis for categorization. Nonetheless, little is known about when and whether infants can be guided by contextual information to select the relevant properties from amongst those available to them. We show here that by 10 months of age infants can be biased, through observational learning, to use one or the other of two object properties for classification. Two groups of infants watched an actress classifying objects by either shape (the Shape group) or surface pattern (the Pattern group). When subsequently presented with two test trials which contradicted either one or the other of the classification rules, infants in the two groups looked longer to the classification event that was incompatible with the rule that group had been familiarized to. These results are discussed with reference to the development of selective feature processing in infancy.     

Observational learning from tool using models by human-reared and mother-reared capuchin monkeys (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Cebus apella</Emphasis>)

Studies of wild capuchins suggest an important role for social learning, but experiments with captive subjects have generally not supported this. Here we report social learning in two quite different populations of capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella). In experiment 1, human-raised monkeys observed a familiar human model open a foraging box using a tool in one of two alternative ways: levering versus poking. In experiment 2, mother-raised monkeys viewed similar techniques demonstrated by monkey models. A control group in each population saw no model. In both experiments, independent coders detected which technique experimental subjects had seen, thus confirming social learning. Further analyses examined fidelity of copying at three levels of resolution. The human-raised monkeys exhibited fidelity at the highest level, the specific tool use technique witnessed. The lever technique was seen only in monkeys exposed to a levering model, by contrast with controls and those witnessing poke. Mother-reared monkeys instead typically ignored the tool and exhibited fidelity at a lower level, tending only to re-create whichever result the model had achieved by either levering or poking. Nevertheless this level of social learning was associated with significantly greater levels of success in monkeys witnessing a model than in controls, an effect absent in the human-reared population. Results in both populations are consistent with a process of canalization of the repertoire in the direction of the approach witnessed, producing a narrower, socially shaped behavioural profile than among controls who saw no model. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.     

A cognitive-based model of tool use in normal aging

While several cognitive domains have been widely investigated in the field of aging, the age-related effects on tool use are still an open issue and hardly any studies on tool use and aging is available. A significant body of literature has indicated that tool use skills might be supported by at least two different types of knowledge, namely, mechanical knowledge and semantic knowledge. However, neither the contribution of these kinds of knowledge to familiar tool use, nor the effects of aging on mechanical and semantic knowledge have been explored in normal aging. The aim of the present study was to fill this gap. To do so, 98 healthy elderly adults were presented with three tasks: a classical, familiar tool use task, a novel tool use task assessing mechanical knowledge, and a picture matching task assessing semantic knowledge. The results showed that aging has a negative impact on tool use tasks and on knowledge supporting tool use skills. We also found that aging did not impact mechanical and semantic knowledge in the same way, confirming the distinct nature of those forms of knowledge. Finally, our results stressed that mechanical and semantic knowledge are both involved in the ability to use familiar tools.     

Scheduling observational and physical practice: Influence on the coding of simple motor sequences

The main purpose of the present experiment was to determine the coordinate system used in the development of movement codes when observational and physical practice are scheduled across practice sessions. The task was to reproduce a 1,300-ms spatial–temporal pattern of elbow flexions and extensions. An intermanual transfer paradigm with a retention test and two effector (contralateral limb) transfer tests was used. The mirror effector transfer test required the same pattern of homologous muscle activation and sequence of limb joint angles as that performed or observed during practice, and the nonmirror effector transfer test required the same spatial pattern movements as that performed or observed. The test results following the first acquisition session replicated the findings of Gruetzmacher, Panzer, Blandin, and Shea (2011) Gruetzmacher, N., Panzer, S., Blandin, Y. and Shea, C. H. 2011. Observation and coding of simple motor sequences. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 64: 1111–1123. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]. The results following the second acquisition session indicated a strong advantage for participants who received physical practice in both practice sessions or received observational practice followed by physical practice. This advantage was found on both the retention and the mirror transfer tests compared to the nonmirror transfer test. These results demonstrate that codes based in motor coordinates can be developed relatively quickly and effectively for a simple spatial–temporal movement sequence when participants are provided with physical practice or observation followed by physical practice, but physical practice followed by observational practice or observational practice alone limits the development of codes based in motor coordinates.     

Infant's perception of goal-directed actions performed by a mechanical device

The present work investigated whether by the end of the first year, infants interpret actions performed by a mechanical device as goal-directed and why they would do so. Using a modified version of the Woodward (1998) habituation paradigm, 9- and 12-month-old infants were tested in a condition in which they saw a mechanical claw performing an action (Study 1). When infants viewed the claw grasping and transporting objects to the back of a stage, 12-month-old but not 9-month-old infants interpreted the action as goal-directed. In Study 2, 9-month-olds received prior to habituation an information phase showing infants how a human held and operated the claw. This enrichment of infants’ knowledge enabled 9-month-old infants to interpret the action display as goal-directed. The role of the developing means-end understanding and tool-use for infants’ interpretation of actions performed by a mechanical device is discussed.     

A comparison of intra- and inter-limb relative motion information in modelling a novel motor skill

The importance of intra- and inter-limb relative motion in modelling a whole body coordination skill was examined. Participants were assigned to one of four groups: Full-Body point light model of a cricket bowler, INTRA-LIMB relative motion of the bowling arm, INTER-LIMB relative motions of the right and left wrists or NO-Relative motion, showing only the motions of the right wrist. During 60 acquisition trials, participants viewed the model five times before each 10-trial block. Retention was examined the following day. Although all groups improved on intra-limb coordination of the bowling arm, the INTRA-LIMB and FULL-BODY groups were more accurate than the INTER-LIMB group in acquisition, although these groups did not differ in retention. For inter-limb coordination, the three groups who received relative motion information performed more like the model than the NO-Relative motion group (even though the INTRA-LIMB group did not see the other limb). The amount of information within a display plays a constraining role on acquisition, perhaps more so than the type of information, such that the acquisition of coordination is more an emergent feature of observational learning, rather than a direct approximation of the model.     

A Biased Inferential Naivety learning model for a network of agents

We propose a Biased Inferential Naivety social learning model. In this model, a group of agents tries to determine the true state of the world and make the best possible decisions. The agents have limited computational abilities. They receive noisy private signals about the true state and observe the history of their neighbors' decisions. The proposed model is rooted in the Bayesian method but avoids the complexity of fully Bayesian inference. In our model, the role of knowledge obtained from social observations is separated from the knowledge obtained from private observations. Therefore, the Bayesian inferences on social observations are approximated using inferential naivety assumption, while purely Bayesian inferences are made on private observations. The reduction of herd behavior is another innovation of the proposed model. This advantage is achieved by reducing the effect of social observations on agents' beliefs over time. Therefore, all the agents learn the truth, and the correct consensus is achieved effectively. In this model, using two cognitive biases, there is heterogeneity in agents' behaviors. Therefore, the growth of beliefs and the learning speed can be improved in different situations. Several Monte Carlo simulations confirm the features of the proposed model. The conditions under which the proposed model leads to asymptotic learning are proved.     

Thinking as the control of imagination: a conceptual framework for goal-directed systems

This paper offers a conceptual framework which (re)integrates goal-directed control, motivational processes, and executive functions, and suggests a developmental pathway from situated action to higher level cognition. We first illustrate a basic computational (control-theoretic) model of goal-directed action that makes use of internal modeling. We then show that by adding the problem of selection among multiple action alternatives motivation enters the scene, and that the basic mechanisms of executive functions such as inhibition, the monitoring of progresses, and working memory, are required for this system to work. Further, we elaborate on the idea that the off-line re-enactment of anticipatory mechanisms used for action control gives rise to (embodied) mental simulations, and propose that thinking consists essentially in controlling mental simulations rather than directly controlling behavior and perceptions. We conclude by sketching an evolutionary perspective of this process, proposing that anticipation leveraged cognition, and by highlighting specific predictions of our model.

Athletes’ ease of imaging predicts their imagery and observational learning use

Objectives

Following the development of the Sport Imagery Ability Questionnaire (SIAQ; Williams & Cumming, 2011), the aim of the present two studies was to more comprehensively examine the relationship between sport-related imagery ability and the functions of imagery and observational learning (OL) athletes report. A second aim was to establish the SIAQ’s predictive validity.

Design

Two samples of cross-sectional questionnaire data are presented in two studies.

Method

For both studies, athletes were recruited from a variety of team and individual sports, ranging in competitive level and years of experience. In Study 1, 117 participants (41 male and 76 female) with a mean age of 24.38 (SD = 9.46) completed the SIAQ and the Sport Imagery Questionnaire (SIQ; Hall, Mack, Paivio, & Hausenblas, 1998). In Study 2, 221 participants (83 male and 138 female) with a mean age of 22.34 (SD = 7.66) completed the SIAQ and the Functions of Observational Learning Questionnaire (FOLQ; Cumming, Clark, Ste-Marie, McCullagh, & Hall, 2005).

Results

Athletes’ imagery ability significantly predicted their imagery and OL use. Moreover, with the exception of performance OL, predictions were stronger when the type of imagery ability closely matched the function of imagery or OL being predicted.

Conclusions

As well as demonstrating the predictive validity of the SIAQ, results from both studies support the need to use imagery ability measures that most closely match the type of imagery or OL being used.