Social influence on the resolution of problems early childhood: the adult as model

• Grant number: 12/01639-2
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: August 01, 2012
• End date: July 31, 2013
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Psychology - Human Development Psychology
• Principal Investigator: Briseida Dôgo de Resende
• Grantee: Jéssica de Carvalho Rodrigues da Silva
• Host Institution: Instituto de Psicologia (IP). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Learning, imitation and human social interactions are common issues in child development psychology. Previous researches about imitation and social influences on infant problem solving found that infants can imitate tool use after watching a demonstration, even if they already knew a simpler way to solve the task. The present research aims at studying if the infants improve the imitation if they are paired to an adult compared to when the adult demonstrate to a group of infants. It is part of a broader research about social influence on learning in a tool use context, so it will contribute with methodological improvement and deeper investigation altering social situation: by pairing the adult demonstrator with the children we expect to raise the observation opportunities, what can reflect on the imitation frequency. Research will be conducted on a kindergarten, with 14 children (18 to 24 months old), and will be separated in two steps: 1) we will replicate a task from a previous study (Cabral and Resende, 2009) that consists on demonstrating the opening of a plastic egg using a plastic cup; 2) the second step will be held with the same group of children, divided in to situations: in situation 1, each infant at a time will go to another room where plastic eggs, plastic cups and paper cups will be accessible and, with no new demonstration, we will register their behavior for 5 minutes, in order to check delayed imitation. Just after that, in situation 2, an adult will demonstrate 3 times the same task demonstrated before to the group and the infant's behavior subsequent to the demonstration will be filmed for 5 minutes. At transcription we will register if the observers payed attention during demonstration and which behaviors they performed in each step, checking if they replicate the behavior sequence presented by the model. (AU)