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The Effect of Narrative Cues on Infants’ Imitation From Television and Picture Books
Author(s) -
Simcock Gabrielle,
Garrity Kara,
Barr Rachel
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
child development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.103
H-Index - 257
eISSN - 1467-8624
pISSN - 0009-3920
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2011.01636.x
Subject(s) - imitation , narrative , psychology , flexibility (engineering) , action (physics) , cognitive psychology , cognition , developmental psychology , social psychology , literature , art , statistics , physics , mathematics , quantum mechanics , neuroscience
Infants can imitate a novel action sequence from television and picture books, yet there has been no direct comparison of infants’ imitation from the 2 types of media. Varying the narrative cues available during the demonstration and test, the current experiments measured 18‐ and 24‐month‐olds’ imitation from television and picture books. Infants imitated from both media types when full narrative cues (Experiment 1; N = 76) or empty, meaningless narration (Experiment 2; N = 135) accompanied the demonstrations, but they imitated more from television than books. In Experiment 3 ( N = 27), infants imitated from a book based on narration alone, without the presence of pictures. These results are discussed in relation to age‐related changes in cognitive flexibility and infants’ emerging symbolic understanding.