Poster #130 - Toddler’s Goal Attribution and Tool-use Strategies in Observational Learning Contexts

• In Event: Poster Session 01

Abstract

Developmental scientists claim that toddlers are sensitive to others' action intentions, artificial design purposes, and tool functions (Gergely, 2011; Hernik, 2020). In previous studies, using the trap tube as a task, it was found that 2-year-olds were able to reproduce the demonstrator's intended outcome (the same as the task's pre-determined goal). As for the way they learn the tool use, they not only learn the demonstrated tool action (demo-push) but also discover alternative tool actions (other-push or pull) on their own (Chung & Huang, 2015; 2017). Table 1 shows different tool actions to retrieve and trap toys. We suppose that toddlers' goal attribution was influential towards tool-use strategies. If they attributed the goal through the intentional cues provided by the demonstrator, they would tend to reproduce the same outcome with the demonstration approach. In this exploratory study, we aimed to distinguish between intentional outcomes and task goals that influence 2-year-olds’ goal attribution. Additionally, does the tool appearance affect the way toddlers use the tool action to achieve the goals? The experimenter demonstrated two two-goal conditions (Hook and No Hook) by the following basic procedure: intended trapped + reset + intended retrieved. During ten trials, there were no significant preferences in reproducing retrieved and trapped toys, Hook, t (19) < 1; No Hook, t (19) = 2.03, p =.056. Neither the retrieve tool action with the demonstration nor the other tool actions to retrieve the toys had group differences (F (1, 38) < 1 and F (1, 38) < 1, respectively). But, when toddlers used the hook tool to retrieve toys by other tool actions, they were more likely to pull rather than push, t (19) = 2.18, p =.042, whereas when they used the no-hook tool, they were equally likely to pull and push, t (19) < 1 (see Figure 1). When they reproduced trapped toys with the demonstrated push action, it showed no difference between groups, F (1, 38) = 1.10, p < .302. A few toddlers used pull actions to trap the toys, Hook, N = 3; No Hook, N = 4. The findings suggest that toddlers were aware of the demonstrator's intention to accomplish two goals and replicated both of them. Interestingly, they less often adopt the observed tool movement patterns to discover alternative means to achieve one of the desired outcomes with the same goal as the task. Instead, take an action that matches the tool's functional characteristics to accomplish the inherent artifactual goal. However, it is important to note that the two-goal conditions, including the resetting procedure, might interfere with the integration of the two events. Perhaps the contextual goals were ambiguous as well as not specified a goal, resulting in the children's performance being unrelated to goal attribution but simply a replication of the two end states they saw. Future studies would investigate whether the proportion of reproducing the two outcomes would be different by the degree of alignment between task goals and the demonstrator’s intentions in the two-goal situation without the resetting procedure.

Authors

• Wan-Ling Chung, NTHU (National Tsing Hua University); NCCU (National Chengchi University)
  Presenting Author

• Chi-Tai Huang, National Chengchi University