Selective Imitation of In‐Group Over Out‐Group Members in 14‐Month‐Old Infants

Recent research has shown that infants are more likely to engage with in‐group over out‐group members. However, it is not known whether infants' learning is influenced by a model's group membership. This study investigated whether 14‐month‐olds (N = 66) selectively imitate and adopt the preferences of in‐group versus out‐group members. Infants watched an adult tell a story either in their native language (in‐group) or a foreign language (out‐group). The adult then demonstrated a novel action (imitation task) and chose 1 of 2 objects (preference task). Infants did not show selectivity in the preference task, but they imitated the in‐group model more faithfully than the out‐group model. This suggests that cultural learning is beginning to be truly cultural by 14 months of age.     

Bilingual Children Adapt to the Needs of Their Communication Partners,Monolinguals Do Not

We explored the ability of children to adapt their communication to the needs of their communication partner. Monolingual and bilingual 3-year-old children (N = 110) observed two puppets looking for puzzle pieces. One puppet showed its appreciation of the children's help, the other puppet wanted to solve the puzzle on its own. The children's communicative acts were coded in terms of level of ostension (how obviously they indicated the hiding place of the puzzle piece) and level of information (how clearly they indicated the location). Monolinguals and bilinguals were equally helpful and informative. In contrast, only bilingual children adapted their level of ostension selectively between the two puppets. These findings point to the greater skills of bilinguals to adapt their communication accordingly.     

Environmental characteristics of a neonatal intensive-care unit

An increasing number of intervention programs are designed to ameliorate the "sensory deprivation" of hospitalized premature infants. However, observation of the premature infant's hospital environment every 15 min for 5 24-hour periods indicated that acoustic stimuli were clearly audible in over 95% of the observations, infants were handled during more than 10% of the times they were observed, and illumination levels were always sufficiently high to permit easy visibility. Analysis of the nature of this stimulation suggests that premature infants may suffer from an inappropriate pattern rather than an inadequate amount of stimulation.     

Compatibility Effects in Young Children's Tool Use: Learning and Transfer

An inherent component of tool-use actions is the transformation of the user's operating movement into the desired effect. In this study, the relevance of this transformation for young children's learning of tool-use actions was investigated. Sixty-four children at the age of 27–30 months learned to use levers which either simply extended (compatible transformation) or reversed (incompatible transformation) their operating movements. Data revealed a compatibility effect as well as transfer effects originating from the two different types of transformations. Furthermore, results suggest that young children's tool-use learning is not a uniform process, but has to be regarded individually depending on the type of transformation.     

白杨礼赞

昨天是亚伯拉罕·林肯200岁的生日。全国都用演讲和歌唱会的形式来纪念我们的第16位总统的非凡人生。但在我们附近地区，庆祝活动延伸到纪念另一个历史事物。