TITLE:
Ostensive Cues Orient 10-Month-Olds’ Attention toward the Task But Delay Learning
AUTHORS:
Rana Esseily, Jacqueline Fagard
KEYWORDS:
Ostensive Cues; Attention Orientation; Eye Tracking; Imitative Learning
JOURNAL NAME:
Psychology,
Vol.4 No.7A,
July
19,
2013
ABSTRACT: The aim of
this study is to investigate how ostensive cues modify infants’ visual
attention to task demonstration, and the extent to which this enhances the
performance in an imitative learning task. We hypothesized that ostensive cues
would help orient infants’ attention toward relevant parts of the demonstration.
We investigated the looking behavior of 41 10-month-old infants while observing
an adult demonstrating a novel target action after having either provided
ostensive cues or not. Infants’ looking behavior was measured using an eye
tracker. Two areas of interest were analyzed: the targeted object and the
adult’s face. Infants’ performance after demonstration was also analyzed. The
results show that infants’ looking behavior varied across groups. When
ostensive cues were not provided, infants looked mainly at the experimenter’s
face. However, when ostensive cues were provided, infants oriented their
attention toward the targeted object. These results suggest that ostensive cues
help infants orient their attention toward task-relevant parts of the scene.
Surprisingly, infants in the non-ostensive group improved their performance
faster after demonstration than infants in the ostensive group. These results
are discussed in terms of a video effect and dissociation between separate
cognitive systems for social and non-social cognition.