Imitation from television during infancy

描述（由申请人提供）：尽管婴儿在婴儿期每天接触电视数小时，但对其真实的行为影响知之甚少。到目前为止，我们知道，到14到18个月大的时候，婴儿可以模仿他们一天前在电视上看到的简单动作。然而，他们模仿电视动作的能力明显落后于他们模仿现场模特所展示的相同动作的能力。这种滞后的原因尚不清楚，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呈现，但在真实的世界中，相同的电视信息通常在一个片段内频繁重复，并在许多场合呈现。其次，实验室研究没有包括商业电视节目的共同特征。最后，实验室研究只呈现了一条孤立的电视信息，但在真实的世界中，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个月大的独立小组将被暴露在目标动作的现场或录像演示中，他们的模仿表现将在24小时后被测量。在第一项研究中，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，直到视频组中的婴儿模仿与现场组中的婴儿相同数量的动作。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注意和模仿。在第三项研究中，我们将研究如何提高从电视中获得的知识对大小或形状不同的物体的概括和转移：（1）通过对各种刺激的目标动作进行建模，以及（2）通过对预先暴露于两个形状和/或颜色不同的物体后的一个物体的目标动作进行建模。在这两种情况下，婴儿将与原始物体或颜色和/或形状不同的物体进行测试。这一结果对幼儿对二维信息的记忆加工具有重要的理论意义。他们也将有重要的应用意义，为正常婴儿制定有效的教育计划，并在这个不断扩大的数字世界中为受损婴儿制定干预计划。

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.