Imitation from television during infancy

描述（由申请人提供）：虽然婴儿在婴儿期每天看很多小时电视，但对其真正的行为影响知之甚少。到目前为止，我们知道14到18个月大的婴儿可以模仿他们一天前在电视上看到的简单动作。然而，他们模仿电视上的动作的能力远远落后于模仿真人模特演示的动作的能力。这种滞后的基础尚不清楚，但有几种可能性是显而易见的。首先，实验室研究只使用了非常短的单一演示，但在现实世界中，相同的电视信息通常在一个片段中频繁重复，并在许多场合呈现。第二，实验室研究没有包括商业电视节目的常见特征。最后，实验室研究只展示了一段孤立的电视信息，但在现实世界中，通常会同时呈现多条信息。在三项研究中，12个月、15个月、18个月和21个月的独立小组将接触到目标动作的现场或录像演示，并在24小时后测量他们的模仿表现。在第一个研究中，视频组的目标动作的重复次数将从3次增加到6次，并将继续增加一倍，直到视频组的婴儿模仿的动作数量与现场组的婴儿相同。在第二项研究中，将测量对包含声音效果和生动音乐的电视序列的关注和模仿。在第三个研究中，将通过以下方法来提高从电视中获得的知识的泛化和转移到大小或形状不同的物体上：(1)通过在各种刺激上模拟目标动作，(2)在预先暴露于两个形状和/或颜色不同的物体后，在一个物体上模拟目标动作。在这两种情况下，婴儿都将用原始物体或颜色和/或形状不同的物体进行测试。该结果将对婴儿二维信息的记忆处理具有重要的理论意义。在这个不断扩大的数字世界中，它们还将对制定针对正常婴儿的有效教育计划和针对受损婴儿的干预计划具有重要的应用意义。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Although infants are exposed to television for many hours per day during infancy, very little is known about its real behavioral impact. To date we know that by 14- to 18-months, infants can imitate simple actions they saw on television 1 day earlier. Their ability to imitate televised actions, however, lags significantly behind their ability to imitate those same actions that were demonstrated by a live model. The basis for this lag is unclear, but several possibilities are obvious. First, laboratory studies have used only very short single presentations, but in the real world, the same televised information is typically frequently repeated within a segment and presented on many occasions. Second, laboratory studies have not included features common to commercially available televised programs. Finally, laboratory studies have presented only an isolated piece of televised information, but in the real world, multiple pieces of information are typically presented at once. In three studies, independent groups of 12-, 15-, 18-, and 21-month-old will be exposed to live or videotaped demonstrations of target actions, and their imitation performance will be measured 24 hr later. In the first study, the number of repetitions of the target actions will be increased from 3 to 6 for the video group and will continue to be doubled until infants in the video group imitate the same number of actions as infants in the live group. In the second study, attention to and imitation of televised sequences containing sound effects and lively music will be measured. In the third study ways to increase generalization and transfer of knowledge gained from television to objects that differ in size or shape will be examined (1) by modeling the target actions on a variety of stimuli and (2) by modeling the target actions on one object after preexposure to two objects that differ in shape and/or color. In both cases, infants will be tested with the original object or one that differs in color and/or shape. The results will have important theoretical implications for infant memory processing of two-dimensionally presented information. They will also have important applied implications for developing effective educational programs for normal infants and intervention programs for compromised infants in this expanding digital world.