Learning blossoms: Caregiver-infant interactions in an outdoor garden setting

Plants provide unique opportunities for learning by engaging all human senses. Recent laboratory studies have shown that infants use a combination of behavioural avoidance and social learning strategies to safely learn about plant properties from adults. Here we investigate how infants and their caregivers interact with plants in an outdoor garden as a first step towards examining the operation of these social learning processes in naturalistic settings. We focus on two specific aspects of spontaneous infant-caregiver interactions with plants: olfactory and touch behaviours. Additionally, we look at whether infants' and caregivers’ prior knowledge of the plants in our study influences infants’ behaviour. Our results showed a multifaceted connection between infants’ and caregivers' previous experience with the plants and their olfactory and touch behaviours. First, infants tended to touch and smell the plants after their caregivers did, and this appeared to be independent of whether infants had seen the plant before. Second, infants systematically engaged in some of the same types of olfactory and touch behaviours their caregiver displayed towards plants. Finally, infants whose caregivers were given more information about the plants in the study showed fewer touch behaviours, but no difference in olfactory behaviours. These findings bolster the previous laboratory studies of plant learning early in life, highlighting the importance of olfactory behaviours, and underscoring the benefits of using ecological observations to explore unique aspects of human development.     

Children's justifications of plants as living things between 5 and 7 years of age

Children do not recognize plants as living things before the age of 6. In order to consider plants as part of the biological domain, children have to inhibit motion as a mandatory characteristic of life and consider other properties as well. We designed a special animated task to help us study how children's explanations about plants change during preschool. This task contained pairs of items, with unexpectedly moving plants being contrasted with motionless animals and artefacts. Children were requested to compare these pairs and to answer “why” questions. Participants were 60 typically developing children aged 5, 6 and 7. Mention of the unexpected motion of plants increased with age, while biological justifications tended to be more frequent in older children for animals only. Functional justifications were hardly ever provided and only for plant–artefact pairs. These findings contribute to a better understanding of young children's conceptions of plants.