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Article published In: Interaction Studies
Vol. 25:2 (2024) ► pp.125–145

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Mothers adjust their demonstrations based on children’s imitation task performance

ORCiD logo with link | The University of Tokyo | DENSO CorporationKariya
 | The University of Tokyo
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

This article was made Open Access under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license through payment of an APC by or on behalf of the authors.

Published online: 7 February 2025
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https://doi.org/10.1075/is.24015.nag
Abstract
As children grow, they increasingly encounter situations requiring them to follow multiple steps to manipulate objects or perform actions. This study examines how caregivers adjust their instructional behavior when a child fails to correctly execute part of a multi-step procedure. Thirty-two mothers demonstrated to their 2–3-year-old children how to use a novel toy with three action sequences. A motion capture system measured the movements of each mother’s hand during demonstrations to assess whether mothers modulated their motions during each manipulation phase. Analyses revealed that mothers changed their demonstrations depending on their children’s imitation task performance. Specifically, mothers shortened their demonstrations for the parts that the children could perform and emphasized their movements for the parts that the children could not perform. This study reveal that, unlike in previous studies, infant-directed actions may contain strategies that are more understandable to children depending on the purpose of the action.
Article outline
  • Child development and the role of social learning
  • Infant-directed actions and their characteristics
  • Children’s overimitation and ostensive cues
  • How to teach multiple steps?
  • The current study
  • Methods
    • Participants
    • Apparatus
    • Stimuli
    • Mothers’ demonstrations
    • Procedure
    • Outcome measures
    • Child baseline, imitation task, and questionnaire
    • Mothers’ kinematics
    • Statistical analyses
  • Results
    • Child baseline and imitation task score
    • Mother’s kinematics
  • Discussion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Data availability statement
  • References
References (42)
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