Journal
PSYCHOLOGICAL BULLETIN
Volume 142, Issue 1, Pages 1-17Publisher
AMER PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOC
DOI: 10.1037/bul0000023
Keywords
child-directed interaction; observational learning; social cognition; culture; infancy
Categories
Funding
- NSF [BCS-1226113]
- Direct For Social, Behav & Economic Scie
- Division Of Behavioral and Cognitive Sci [1226113] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Theorists have proposed that child-directed, ostensive interactions provide a critical point of entry for supporting children's learning from others, either because they render the intentions of a teacher easier to understand (e.g., Barresi & Moore, 1996; Moore, 2010; Tomasello, 1999) or because they mark information as culturally important and generalizable (e.g., Csibra & Gergely, 2009). This article evaluates these proposals in light of data from U.S. and European children, as well as from communities where directed interactions with young children are rare. The evidence reviewed from both bodies of work leave reason to doubt the claim that directed interactions provide automatic and innate informational value for learners. Instead, the value of child-directed teaching contexts likely stems from 2 factors: how these interactions focus children's attention in the moment, and how children learn to reason pragmatically regarding the value child-directed contexts have.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available