How Mothers Teach the Designed Actions of Everyday Objects

• In Event: Poster Session 06
  In Poster Session: PS 06 Topic - Perceptual, Sensory, Motor

Abstract

To perform activities of daily living, children must use cultural objects with specific designed actions (e.g., untwisting toothpaste lid). Recent work (Rachwani, et al., 2020, J Exp Psych: Gen) identified a developmental progression in children’s learning of designed actions—from non-designed exploratory actions (12 months), to discovery and display of the designed action (18-24 months), to successful implementation (30-36 months). Lags between steps in the progression reflect non-obvious object properties and specific perceptual-motor requirements that impede children’s learning. As experienced members of the culture, caregivers likely provide social information to help children overcome the challenges of discovery and implementation. But prior research on learning about everyday objects from social partners typically emphasizes the role of cognition, and thus little is known about the social contributions to motor-skill learning for using cultural artifacts.
We investigated how mothers teach their children the designed actions of cultural artifacts and examined real-time associations between mothers’ input and children’s actions. Mothers were instructed to teach their 12- to 36-month-old infants (N=74) to open containers with twist-off or pull-off lids. Here, we focus on mothers’ manual inputs—attention directives (e.g., pointing), information about the designed action (e.g., twisting gesture), or assistance with implementation (e.g., stabilizing container base).
Preliminary results showed that providing information about the designed action was the most common of mothers’ manual behaviors (M=62% of trials), but mothers of the youngest children used attention directives and assisted with implementation on half of trials (Figure 1). All types of manual input decreased with children’s age, rs> -.42, ps<.011.
We examined children’s actions in the five-second window before each manual-input event to test whether mothers tailored their behaviors to children’s actions in the moment. Mothers primarily provided information about the designed action after children simply held the container (M=50%), and this real-time sequence moderately decreased with children’s age (r= -.33, p=.081; Figure 2A). Similarly, mothers assisted with implementation mainly after children held the container (M=66%), and this real-time sequence decreased with children’s age; (r= -.42, p=.046; Figure 2B); they rarely assisted with implementation after children displayed the designed action but were unsuccessful (M=11%).
In addition, when mothers assisted with implementation, they often eliminated perceptual-motor difficulties entirely by altering the task. In the five seconds after mothers assisted with implementation, children successfully opened the container 51% of the time. But for 55% of those openings, children did not have to perform the designed action to succeed (e.g., mother twisted fully so child only needed to lift the lid).
Results highlight the difficulties in teaching children specific motor actions while attuning to their developmental level. Mothers provided helpful information when children did not display the designed action, but not when children struggled with implementation. And when mothers completely remove perceptual-motor challenges, children are unlikely to learn designed actions at all. Limitations in social support for teaching the specifics of motor actions may explain children’s prolonged learning of designed actions. We are currently investigating mothers’ verbal input and delving further into the real-time correspondence between mothers’ and children’s behaviors.

Authors

• Brianna Kaplan, New York University
  Presenting Author

• Jaya Rachwani, City University of New York Hunter College
  Non-Presenting Author

• Isabella Kasaba, New York University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Catherine S Tamis-Lemonda, New York University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Karen E Adolph, New York University
  Non-Presenting Author