Repetition in infant-directed action depends on the goal structure of the object evidence for statistical regularities

Rebecca J. Brand, Anna Mcgee, Jonathan F. Kominsky, Kristen Briggs, Aline Gruneisen, Tessa Orbach

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract (may include machine translation)

Adults automatically adjust their speech and actions in a way that may facili-tate infants' processing (e.g., Brand, Baldwin, & Ashburn, 2002). This research examined whether mothers' use of repetition for infants depended on whether the object being demonstrated required a series of actions in sequence in order to reach a salient goal (called an "enabling" sequence). Mothers (n = 39) demon-strated six objects, three with an enabling sequence and three with an arbitrary sequence, to their 6-to 8-or 11-to 13-month-olds. As predicted, in demonstra-tions of objects with an enabling sequence, mothers were more likely to repeat series of actions, whereas for those without such structure, mothers were more likely to repeat individual units of action. This may or may not have been delib-erately pedagogical on mothers' part, but nevertheless indicates another way in which input to infants is richly patterned to support their learning.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)337-353
Number of pages17
JournalGesture
Volume9
Issue number3
DOIs
StatePublished - 2009
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Infant-directed action or motionese
  • Pedagogy
  • Repetition
  • Statistical learning

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