Imitation from television during infancy

描述(由申请人提供)：尽管婴儿在婴儿期每天都会长时间地看电视，但人们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一天前在电视上看到的简单动作。然而，他们模仿电视转播动作的能力远远落后于他们模仿现场模特演示的相同动作的能力。这种滞后的基础尚不清楚，但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会在一个片段中频繁重复，并在许多情况下呈现。其次，实验室研究没有包括商业可获得的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，但在现实世界中，通常一次呈现多条信息。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，24小时后将测量他们的模仿表现。在第一项研究中，视频组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直播组中的婴儿相同数量的动作。在第二项研究中，将测量对包含音效和活泼音乐的电视序列的关注和模仿。在第三项研究中，将探讨(1)通过对各种刺激下的目标动作进行建模，以及(2)通过对两个形状和/或颜色不同的物体进行预曝光后对一个物体上的目标动作进行建模，来增加从电视获得的知识的概化和向不同大小或形状不同的物体转移的方法。在这两种情况下，婴儿都将接受原始物体或颜色和/或形状不同的物体的测试。这一结果将对婴儿对二维呈现信息的记忆加工具有重要的理论意义。它们还将对在这个不断扩大的数字世界中为正常婴儿制定有效的教育计划和为受损婴儿制定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.