Department of Cognitive, Linguistic, and Psychological Sciences, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA.
Dev Psychobiol. 2020 Dec;62(8):1021-1034. doi: 10.1002/dev.21999. Epub 2020 Jun 14.
Prior work indicates that infants can use social information to organize simple audiovisual inputs into predictable rules by 8 months of age. However, it is unclear whether infants can use social information to organize more complex events into predictable rules that can be used to guide motor action. To examine these issues, we tested 9-month-old infants using a modified version of an A-not-B task, in which hiding event sequences were paired with different experimenters, who could be used to organize the events into rules that guide action. We predicted that infants' reaching accuracy would be better when the experimenter changes when the toy's hiding location changes, relative to when the experimenter stays the same, as this should cue a novel rule used to guide action. Experiments 1 and 2 validated this prediction. Experiment 3 showed that reaching accuracy was better when the toy's hiding location switched but was consistent with the rule associated with the experimenter, relative to when the toy's hiding location repeated but was inconsistent with the rule associated with the experimenter. These data suggest that infants can use the identities of experimenters to organize events into predictable rules that guide action in the A-not-B task.
先前的研究表明，婴儿在 8 个月大时就可以利用社交信息将简单的视听输入组织成可预测的规则。然而，目前尚不清楚婴儿是否可以利用社交信息将更复杂的事件组织成可用于指导动作的可预测规则。为了研究这些问题，我们使用修改后的 A-not-B 任务对 9 个月大的婴儿进行了测试，在该任务中，隐藏事件序列与不同的实验者配对，实验者可以用来将事件组织成指导动作的规则。我们预测，当玩具的隐藏位置改变时，实验者改变，相对于实验者保持不变时，婴儿的伸手准确性会更好，因为这应该提示一种用于指导动作的新规则。实验 1 和实验 2 验证了这一预测。实验 3 表明，当玩具的隐藏位置发生变化但与实验者相关的规则一致时，婴儿的伸手准确性更好，而当玩具的隐藏位置重复但与实验者相关的规则不一致时，婴儿的伸手准确性较差。这些数据表明，婴儿可以利用实验者的身份将事件组织成可预测的规则，从而在 A-not-B 任务中指导动作。
