Making it Happen

In order to demonstrate the ability of infants to display observational learning, Waismeyer and Meltzoff (2017) conducted three experiments that examined infants learning of a physical event, and a social-causal event. In addition they also looked at the ability for infants to learn via observation when the event did not occur every time but instead occurred only a majority of the time (probabilistic cause-effect relationship).

Physical Cause-Effect Relationship

Children observed a model manipulate a marble dispenser. There were two test objects. When the model shook object 1 a marble was dispensed. When the model shook object 2 no marble was dispensed.

On average, children specifically chose to shake object 1, demonstrating that they had learned the cause-effect relationship.

Social Cause-Effect Relationship

Similar to the first experiment however, the marble dispenser was replaced by an adult “dispenser”. When the model shook object 1 the adult presented the model with a marble. When the model shook object 2 the adult did not present the model with a marble.

Children observed this activity played by the model and adult and when it was their turn to “play” were generally successful in choosing the correct object to shake. This means that infants are able to observe interactions between people and make decisions about how to behave and act in social situations.

Probabilistic Causal Relationships

The probabilistic experiment follows the same pattern of the first two experiments. However, when object 1 was shook a marble was only presented a majority of the time.

Children’s observations of probabilistic causality in the physical and social context demonstrated an understanding of the relationship between cause-effect regardless of the frequency to which the shaking of object 1 was reinforced by the presentation of a marble.

Waismeyer, A., & Meltzoff, A. N. (2017). Learning to make things happen: Infants’ observational learning of social and physical causal events. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 162, 58-71. doi:http://dx.doi.org.cat1.lib.trentu.ca:8080/10.1016/j.jecp.2017.04.018

This experiment highlights the importance of social modelling in your household. Children learn behaviours from the manner in which parents and siblings conduct themselves. In this way, children are becoming more independent and use increasingly complex forms of learning in order to decode social cues and learn right from wrong.