question from a psychologist about children's learning

[amorphia]

Hi all,

I'm hoping someone here might be able to come up with a real life example from a traditional skill, to help me illustrate an interesting phenomenom about the way children learn new tasks by watching others. I'm interested in bushcrafty style skills because these are the skills that people have performed for hundreds of thousands of years, and so can have shaped the way we have evolved to think.

The phenomenon is called overimitation, and what it means is this: when young children watch an adult perform a task, and then try it themselves, they tend to faithfully copy all the details of the adult's actions, even if some of those actions were really blatantly not necessary to achieve the final goal. For example, when opening a box which is transparent so you can see the locking mechanism, children will copy odd things like tapping the box on the side, even though it doesn't seem to help open the box at all.

Some psychologists think that the children belief the odd action was necessary for opening the box, even if they can't see why. I'm interesting in an alternative explanation - the odd action might be useful for secondary reason, different to the main purpose.

Here are a couple of such examples (I think they are not such great examples and there ought to be much better ones - that's why I'm asking you!).

If you are picking mushrooms, your main goal is to get as many mushrooms as you can. So it's a little odd not to pick all the mushrooms. But you might do that because you have a secondary goal of leaving one to go to spore so there are some next season too.

If you are lighting a fire, probably the more tinder the easier it is, so it's odd not to use it all. But you might not use it all because you have a secondary aim of also being able to light a fire next time so you don't want to run out of tinder.

Both these examples focus on some kind of limited resource. It would be especially interesting to hear any example which don't feature that. Perhaps some kind of food processing example, where there is some useful byproduct, or something like that?

Thanks anyway for any ideas!

Cheers,

Ben

 

[firecrest]

Im not sure if this will be useful or not, but chimpanzees learn tool use in the same way - by exact imitation of adults, interestingly after a chimp has turned 4, it is incapable of learning these skills effectively, even when surrounded by adults performing the task.

 

[Matt Weir]

Hello and welcome Amorphia,

I believe the resource issue you mention is due to the natural conservation circuits hard wired into the head. This may seem at odd with the common perception of humans these days as being resource greedy and without much care at that but something happens when folk are taken out of their urban 'on tap' settings after a couple of days and that switch flicks and the old hunter gatherer mentality kicks in. To me it's as good a case of nature over nurture that you will witness.

 

[DoctorSpoon]

I have two children and have done a lot of craft / cookery things with them and friends and must say I have never observed anything like that. I would suggest that it is an uncommon phenomena!
Nicola

 

[SimonM]

How many psychologist's does it take to change a light bulb?







Just one, but the bulb has really got to want to change!

 

[Tonedef]

If you have Sky/NTL, you would be interested in one of the programs, it covered Chimp Vs Human.

The up shot is, human children copy to the letter every action etc....
chimps dont, they cut to the chase.

seems the exact copying of an action is more beneficial in the long run.

so from what i understand using your example, a human child would copy to the letter only collecting nnn mushrooms of a given size/colour/shape etc ...

a chimp would collect all the same large and small.

 

[amorphia]

Thanks for your thoughts folks.

Chimps are indeed interesting to compare here. There is one particular experiment done the same with chimps and children. They see a demonstration of how to open a black box by putting a stick in two holes, one after the other. Both species copy the sequence. Then you show them the same thing but with a transparent box, so they can see that the first poke does nothing, but the second poke engages the mechanism. The children go right on copying the first useless poke, but the chimps drop it straight away.

This is a very robust phenomenon. Anyone who doesn't believe it, just grab the nearest four year old, teach them to open an unfamilar box, but before you open it, tap it with a feather. Give them the box to open (along with the feather) and you'll soon be convinced.

But, still no one has come up with a better example of a real life example of this than I have! I bet you can do better than this! Remember, I'm not looking for examples where children copy action steps that are useless - it is rare that an adult would teach them that. I just want an example of any skill where there are steps taken which are not primarily directed at the main goal, but serve some secondary goal which might not be obvious. Come on!

Cheers,

Ben

 

[DoctorSpoon]

Thanks for your thoughts folks.

Chimps are indeed interesting to compare here. There is one particular experiment done the same with chimps and children. They see a demonstration of how to open a black box by putting a stick in two holes, one after the other. Both species copy the sequence. Then you show them the same thing but with a transparent box, so they can see that the first poke does nothing, but the second poke engages the mechanism. The children go right on copying the first useless poke, but the chimps drop it straight away.

This is a very robust phenomenon. Anyone who doesn't believe it, just grab the nearest four year old, teach them to open an unfamilar box, but before you open it, tap it with a feather. Give them the box to open (along with the feather) and you'll soon be convinced.

But, still no one has come up with a better example of a real life example of this than I have! I bet you can do better than this! Remember, I'm not looking for examples where children copy action steps that are useless - it is rare that an adult would teach them that. I just want an example of any skill where there are steps taken which are not primarily directed at the main goal, but serve some secondary goal which might not be obvious. Come on!

Cheers,

Ben

As a researcher myself I'd like to know why you're asking - what are you trying to prove?

As I see it little kids believe in magic, fairies, and santa ... because they want to, because it's fun. Show them to open a box by waving the magic wand (or feather) first and of course they'll copy! It feels to me like you are reading rather too much into this 'phenomena'.

Nicola

 

[Tonedef]

But, still no one has come up with a better example of a real life example of this than I have! I bet you can do better than this! Remember, I'm not looking for examples where children copy action steps that are useless - it is rare that an adult would teach them that. I just want an example of any skill where there are steps taken which are not primarily directed at the main goal, but serve some secondary goal which might not be obvious. Come on!

Ben, maybe the red loopy juice is effecting my brain, but dont we all do things, which are not necessary taught us.

Watching mother do the ironing, ok later in life i refined this with the help of a nice cpl.
Nana making the cake on a Sunday, again, i picked up the basics, and refined this via cookery books.
Father checking the car before a journey, again later in life

Washing, separating colured cloths before washing.

Or do I have the wrong end of the stick ?

 

[amorphia]

As a researcher myself I'd like to know why you're asking - what are you trying to prove?

Well, with this particular enquiry, I'm not trying to prove very much. The phenomena is already well demonstrated (as you research learning you might be interested in a good reference, which I give at the end here). What I am trying to establish are examples of where this human behavioural trait might be useful, in realistic situations outside the lab. When it comes to systems where how everything works isn't obvious, there are clear reasons why one generally might imitate something even though one can't see exactly how it helps. Even as adults we do this all the time, for example when learning how to achieve something in a complicated computer program by watching someone else - you don't know why they had to click a particular icon but you copy it anyway because you assume they wouldn't have done it if it wasn't necessary.

But physical systems tend to be more obvious in the sense that you can usually see why it is necessary to perform a particular action. So it's a little harder to think of why humans do this with physical systems where the causality is obvious. Hence my idea that some steps might be undertaken for some other reason than achieving the immediate primary goal, and this might be one reason why it is a useful behaviour to imitate steps you can't see a reason for.

As I see it little kids believe in magic, fairies, and santa ... because they want to, because it's fun.Show them to open a box by waving the magic wand (or feather) first and of course they'll copy!

Well, that level of explanation might satisfy you but I am more curious about why children want to copy such things, and why might it be fun? Often we are designed to want to do things (eat, have sex, etc) because they help us survive and so we have evolved that way for a reason. I wonder if this tendency might be helpful as well as fun. Chimpanzees do lots of things for fun too, but they don't do this. Why not?

It feels to me like you are reading rather too much into this 'phenomena'.

Not really! As you are interested in learning I encourage you to think some more about it because it seems to me it may have relevance for you.

By the way, I guess there is no need for me to be anonymous: www.benkenward.com/scientist.html

Cheers,

Ben

Horner, V. & Whiten, A. 2005. Causal knowledge and imitation/emulation switching in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and children Animal Cognition, 8, 164-181.
Abstract This study explored whether the tendency of
chimpanzees and children to use emulation or imitation
to solve a tool-using task was a response to the availability
of causal information. Young wild-born chimpanzees
from an African sanctuary and 3- to 4-year-old children
observed a human demonstrator use a tool to retrieve a reward
from a puzzle-box. The demonstration involved both
causally relevant and irrelevant actions, and the box was
presented in each of two conditions: opaque and clear. In
the opaque condition, causal information about the effect
of the tool inside the box was not available, and hence it
was impossible to differentiate between the relevant and
irrelevant parts of the demonstration. However, in the clear
condition causal information was available, and subjects
could potentially determine which actions were necessary.
When chimpanzees were presented with the opaque box,
they reproduced both the relevant and irrelevant actions,
thus imitating the overall structure of the task. When the
box was presented in the clear condition they instead ignored
the irrelevant actions in favour of a more efficient,
emulative technique. These results suggest that emulation
is the favoured strategy of chimpanzees when sufficient
causal information is available. However, if such information
is not available, chimpanzees are prone to employ a
more comprehensive copy of an observed action. In contrast
to the chimpanzees, children employed imitation to
solve the task in both conditions, at the expense of efficiency.
We suggest that the difference in performance of
chimpanzees and children may be due to a greater susceptibility
of children to cultural conventions, perhaps combined
with a differential focus on the results, actions and goals of
the demonstrator.

 

[DoctorSpoon]

Thank you for validating yourself. It'll be interesting to see if you get a different response from our membership now. We're a friendly, helpful lot but I don't think from your first posts anyone really got to grips with what you were asking or why. Folk were trying to answer your research question rather than giving instances of the observed phenomena. We get a lot of newbies asking random questions and you were just another one! (My current research is leading me in the direction of examining the informal knowledge transmission that occurs in places such as this forum so these exchanges are fascinating to me )

Your research also sounds fascinating - particularly that you have moved on from studying animals and birds to children. Whilst I am a little skeptical of phenomenological studies I am very open minded about any serious research - I work in a department of Art & Design and have found that fine art has much to offer of interest - so will be interested to see where you go with this.

Do keep in touch,
Nicola.

 

[xylaria]

We are animals that speak. From observing mine and other peoples children I, yes they copy behaviour, I am hard pressed to separate verbal explanations from gaining a skill. A child doesn't learn to carve, weave, start a fire just from just copying, they receive verbal instruction. Very small children will be inspired to do something they see adults do, but to be successful they need input, very few skills can be just developed, in the way say walking is. It is like planting a seed and never watering it. I have often said weaving is something that is hardwired into the human brain, in part the skill is innate but knowing how to do the hurdlers knot has to shown. Instruction is vital to explain parts that can not be seen, like dangers, what is happening out of view.

Put it this way i learned nalbinding earlier this year, i tried to follow written instructions and failed to pickup the skill, i sat through a video in Finish and failed, eventually I found english instructions with point by point diagrams, i learned the skill that way. In my experience most skills are picked up using the multiple of senses regardless of age. A preschooler just copying knitting at best makes knots and bangs the needles together they do not learn to knit just by copying.

 

[robin wood]

. The phenomena is already well demonstrated

Horner, V. & Whiten, A. 2005. Causal knowledge and imitation/emulation switching in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and children Animal Cognition, 8, 164-181.
Abstract This study explored whether the tendency of
chimpanzees and children to use emulation or imitation
to solve a tool-using task was a response to the availability
of causal information. Young wild-born chimpanzees
from an African sanctuary and 3- to 4-year-old children
observed a human demonstrator use a tool to retrieve a reward
from a puzzle-box. The demonstration involved both
causally relevant and irrelevant actions, and the box was
presented in each of two conditions: opaque and clear. In
the opaque condition, causal information about the effect
of the tool inside the box was not available, and hence it
was impossible to differentiate between the relevant and
irrelevant parts of the demonstration. However, in the clear
condition causal information was available, and subjects
could potentially determine which actions were necessary.
When chimpanzees were presented with the opaque box,
they reproduced both the relevant and irrelevant actions,
thus imitating the overall structure of the task. When the
box was presented in the clear condition they instead ignored
the irrelevant actions in favour of a more efficient,
emulative technique. These results suggest that emulation
is the favoured strategy of chimpanzees when sufficient
causal information is available. However, if such information
is not available, chimpanzees are prone to employ a
more comprehensive copy of an observed action. In contrast
to the chimpanzees, children employed imitation to
solve the task in both conditions, at the expense of efficiency.
We suggest that the difference in performance of
chimpanzees and children may be due to a greater susceptibility
of children to cultural conventions, perhaps combined
with a differential focus on the results, actions and goals of
the demonstrator.

Interesting ideas.

Are there other tests of this theory or is it an isolated paper? how big was the sample size, sorry I know I could chase the paper up but I am being lazy? why 3-4 year olds and how old were the chimps? What experience had the kids had in their upbringing? do as mum says or shows and you get praise? (susceptibility to cultural conventions?)

I would draw the conclusion that the chimps are learning and the children are not but I am sure a 7 year old would have worked it out and maybe the 4 year old would too given more time or incentive (differential focus?). I am not sure about the abstracts usage of the words imitate and emulate they don't correlate with my dictionary though maybe they make clear their usage in the paper.

Anyway here is our boy learning to whistle by imitating? or emulating? his elder sister, whatever I am not sure how un chimplike he was at that age so maybe doesn't help.

My experience of teaching craft skills is actually exactly the opposite of the above findings though I do not work with 3 year olds. What I want people to do in the early stages is pure imitation in order to train manual dexterity but what they want to do is jump ahead to the establishing the principle at a theoretical level stage. I wonder if there are differences in the rates of development of manual dexterity of children and chimps and if that has any relevance.

 

[BOD]

The learning mentioned is entirely visual. The observer has to learn initially by copying exactly and only later modify after more experience. Presumably the sooner the learner abandons 'unnecessary' steps is related to high reasoning ability and intelligence.

However since we learn also by explanation, I cannot think of any useful learning in Western culturesthat will demonstrate the point you wish. Sooner or later the child/student will ask or the parent/teacher to provide a reason. Why do you assume the teacher withholds the secondary reason from the learner?

Iban tribes men make very small cooking fires when on the move and for themselves. (They make big ones for us because they know we like big ones). Children and adolescents observe and copy. If asked they might not know why a small fire is made. But a conceivable secondary purpose may be to conserve wood and minimise scaring game away which they depend on for protein. By the time you are older you have either worked it out or have been told.

Similarly they sharpen parangs by pushing them on shrapening rocks away from the body. That is their way and any youngster who does it any other way will be told that this is THE Iban way. A secondary reason might be that it is not a good idea to draw large blades toward you but of course it is unlikely that an adult would say so since we are dealing with proud headhunter descendants not suburbanites.

 

[DoctorSpoon]

The observer has to learn initially by copying exactly and only later modify after more experience. Presumably the sooner the learner abandons 'unnecessary' steps is related to high reasoning ability and intelligence.

In my experience of studying those who teach and learn craft skill, the stage at which start to learners modify what they are doing depends on their ability to reflect on the result of their actions. Learners who are capable of acting reflectively quickly experiment by modifying their actions and then reflect on the result of those modifications. Learners who don't either carry on directly imitating what they have seen or try other things but often randomly, without trying to understand the feedback from their actions.

My interpretation of the thing with the chimps is that they are clearly of an age where they have learned to act reflectively, but the children are not. I don't know at what age children learn reflection (I'm sure it's documented, but I study adult learners) - as a mother I would reckon that 3-4 years of age is waaaay to young.

Nicola

 

[Seabeggar]

I remember my dad sticking out the tip of his tongue when doing a complex mechanical task and have seen others doing this and find myself doing it! Is this learned or associated to some more direct neurological pathway relating to task focusing?

 

[Tony]

Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists - :You_Rock_ There's something cool about that

Welcome to the forum and I hope that you get some good feedback on your questions.

 

[firecrest]

Ive heard it said that children follow their parents exactly because its a better survival strategy than attempting to interpret the parents directions. for instance "dont go in the water or you will be eaten by a crocodile" The small child that obeys has greater odds of survival than the child that decides to test if his parents hypothesis was correct, even if the second child displays higher intelligence reasoning, it will not live to pass on its genes. I can think only of the examples of culture and religion sprouting from this. other primates do not have culture and religion, and us having so is of no real benefit. We tend to stick with our parents religion. We do this because when we are brought up a certain way, we will largely continue to follow rituals,praying 5 times a day facing east, signing the cross or jojking, however irrelevant it looks to an outsider, it feels like it means something to the person doing it.
Perhaps this is the crux - Humans carry on ritualistic habit with no observable immediate benefit whereas chimps do not. This has given rise to human cultural development - a debatably beneficial (and frequently unbeneficial) by-product whilst chimps do not differ in clan cultural behaviour, such as performing banana dances for the bananas to ripen, or believing that some perfectly edible foodstuffs are unclean.
It is strange we have proliferated despite many of our self-imposed handicaps , culture doesnt nessisarily have a benefit, it could simply be that humans enjoyed an abundance in which ritualistic behaviour was not a big hinderance.

 

[Robby]

My interpretation of the thing with the chimps is that they are clearly of an age where they have learned to act reflectively, but the children are not. I don't know at what age children learn reflection (I'm sure it's documented, but I study adult learners) - as a mother I would reckon that 3-4 years of age is waaaay to young.

Nicola

I think this is a very good point to raise, in that, is the age range of the chimps used in the test correlated to relate to the same developemental stage of a four year old. I'm not a psychologist, so I don't know the correct terminology, but is there an issue in the comparison of a developing four year old human to what would be classed a fully developed adult chimp. (Is there info on the age and developmental stage of the chimps used in the test.)

I raise the question because I have a lot of experience working with dogs and I know it has been put forward that there is a dog to human developemental correlation that would mean a two year old dog would be going through similar stages to a teenager just reaching adult hood.

so I guess I'm trying to say is, is this really a valid comparison? Kids do mimick, I think the biggest difficulty would be to find examples that follow the strictures of the lab test. as any learning exchange between individuals would always be accompanied by some sort of verbal (and non-verbal) communication.

And I do the 'tongue out' thing as well, as do most of my family. Genetic or learned?

 

[amorphia]

Thanks everyone for another bunch of interesting thoughts and observations. Too many points for me to comment on all of them unfortunately! So I'll just out fling some more random information quickly. For the question about are there more studies on this, yes there are quite a few, and it really is a robust effect, but none of these studies are on very naturalistic behaviours, and that's one of the reasons I've been asking questions here. The most recent study I know of is at the end of this post. Those people reckon their data prove that children really believe you have to do the unnecessary step, i.e. the method doesn't work without it.

I don't believe this myself. We just did an experiment on this and I was really surprised by how strong the children's tendency is to imitate an action which doesn't appear to help achieve the goal. But one of the things we have done in our study is ask the children questions about the actions, and many of them don't seem to believe the odd action is strictly necessary when they explain it. In fact some of them even spontanously ask why the experimenter is doing that step. So they do have some ability to reflect over what they are doing (this was with four year olds) but obviously not on the level of adults.

The last thing I'll say is a fun annecdote from one of my students. She said that when her mother taught her how to cook a swedish christmas ham, she cut a piece off the end before putting it in to cook. She copied that technique but then later asked her mother what it was for. Her mothered replied, I don't know, that's how my mother did it. When the grandmother was asked, she said, well I used to do that because my oven was too small to fit the whole thing in, but you guys have modern big ovens so why are you doing it! So there's something you might call overimitation in adults...

Cheers!

Ben



Lyons, D. E., Young, A. G. & Keil, F. C. 2007. The hidden structure of overimitation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 104, 19751-19756.
Abstract: Young children are surprisingly judicious imitators, but there are also times when their reproduction of others' actions appears strikingly illogical. For example, children who observe an adult inefficiently operating a novel object frequently engage in what we term overimitation, persistently reproducing the adult's unnecessary actions. Although children readily overimitate irrelevant actions that even chimpanzees ignore, this curious effect has previously attracted little interest; it has been assumed that children overimitate not for theoretically significant reasons, but rather as a purely social exercise. In this paper, however, we challenge this view, presenting evidence that overimitation reflects a more fundamental cognitive process. We show that children who observe an adult intentionally manipulating a novel object have a strong tendency to encode all of the adult's actions as causally meaningful, implicitly revising their causal understanding of the object accordingly. This automatic causal encoding process allows children to rapidly calibrate their causal beliefs about even the most opaque physical systems, but it also carries a cost. When some of the adult's purposeful actions are unnecessary-even transparently so-children are highly prone to mis-encoding them as causally significant. The resulting distortions in children's causal beliefs are the true cause of overimitation, a fact that makes the effect remarkably resistant to extinction. Despite countervailing task demands, time pressure, and even direct warnings, children are frequently unable to avoid reproducing the adult's irrelevant actions because they have already incorporated them into their representation of the target object's causal structure.