» Articles » PMID: 34333263

The Early Ontogeny of Infants' Imitation of on Screen Humans and Robots

Overview
Date 2021 Aug 1
PMID 34333263
Citations 2
Authors
Affiliations
Soon will be listed here.
Abstract

Traditionally, infants have learned how to interact with objects in their environment through direct observations of adults and peers. In recent decades these models have been available over different media, and this has introduced non-human agents to infants' learning environments. Humanoid robots are increasingly portrayed as social agents in on screen, but the degree to which infants are capable of observational learning from screen-based robots is unknown. The current study thus investigated how well 1- to 3-year-olds (N = 230) could imitate on-screen robots relative to on-screen and live humans. Participants exhibited an imitation deficit for robots that varied with age. Furthermore, the well-known video deficit did not replicate as expected, and was weak and transient relative to past research. Together, the findings documented here suggest that infants are learning from media in ways that differ from past generations, but that this new learning is nuanced when novel technologies are involved.

Citing Articles

Social robots in research on social and cognitive development in infants and toddlers: A scoping review.

Flatebo S, Tran V, Wang C, Bongo L PLoS One. 2024; 19(5):e0303704.

PMID: 38748722 PMC: 11095739. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0303704.


Exploring the use of projected videos to test action matching from different perspectives in dogs.

Fugazza C, Higaki F Biol Futur. 2024; .

PMID: 38714588 DOI: 10.1007/s42977-024-00222-6.