2-029 - Effects of Motor Imitation and Social Cues on A-not-B Task Performance in Infants and Toddlers

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

The papers in this symposium present new findings and integrative summaries that address the important issue of effects of social cues on behavior in the classic A-not-B task designed to assess object permanence. Together, these papers present the most comprehensive investigation from three different perspectives. Until now, explanations of the classic perseverative search error in 9-month-olds focused on insufficient inhibitory motor control of the infant’s own learned search behaviors during A-trials. Presentation 1 shows that the error also results from only observing the experimenter’s actions during A-trials, which suggests a perceptual and motor mapping explanation. Presentation 2 shows that the error can be manipulated by subtle experimenter eye gaze cues even during the classic, active search procedures, indicating that eye gaze cues can overcome combined effects due to insufficient inhibitory motor control and observational motor mapping. Further, these findings suggest that infant expectations can be flipped from high expectation that the object will be found at B to high expectation it will be found at A (see highlighted cells in Table 1). Presentation 3 shows enduring social effects on searching as well as anticipatory looking behaviors -- and no effects due to representation of object location -- in two-location search tasks in young 2-year-olds. This symposium will spark reconsideration of the relative roles of object representation versus use of social cues in the search behavior for occluded objects during the first two years.

Sub Unit

• Cognitive Processes

Chair

• William Fabricius, Arizona State University

Discussant

• Jeffrey J. Lockman, Tulane University

Individual Presentations

• Testing Infants’ Action-Perception With an Observational A-not-B Search Task - Presenting Author: Ty W. Boyer, Georgia Southern University; Non-Presenting Author: Bennett I. Bertenthal, Indiana University

• The Use of Social Cues by 9-month-olds in the A-not-B Search Task - Presenting Author: Kirsty J. Dunn, Psychology Department Lancaster University; Non-Presenting Author: J. Gavin Bremner, Lancaster University

• Effects of Social Cues on Search and Visual Anticipation for Hidden Objects in 2-Year-Olds - Presenting Author: William Fabricius, Arizona State University; Non-Presenting Author: Rachel Keen, University of Virginia