Video as a source of information about object-directed actions at age two

From previous studies we know that 2-year-olds find it difficult to apply information presented on television to real word situations (Troseth et al. 2006, Troseth, DeLoache, 1998). While people interact contingently in real life, people that children see in video clearly do not, therefore children may not consider persons on the screen as informative social partners as those in real life. Using the Re-enactment of Intended Acts paradigm we investigated whether children would re-enact what an adult intended to do from a video presentation, as they do when presented with live demonstrations (Meltzoff, 1995). 46 children aged 21 months participated in the study. Children were randomly assigned to one of the following conditions: Demonstration Target, Demonstration Intention, Control Adult Manipulation, Control Baseline. After completing the Re-enactment of intention task, children were also administered: (i) a Gift delay task (Kochanska et al., 2000), and a (ii) a Reverse categorization task (Carlson et al., 2004). Like in previous studies with live presentations using the Re-enactment of intention task, children reproduced more target actions in the demonstration conditions compared to the control conditions, which did not significantly differ from each other. However, children performances in the demonstration conditions differed from live presentation, as they produced significantly fewer target actions in Demonstration Intention compared to Demonstration Target condition. Performances in the Re-enactment of intention task were positively related to Reverse categorization scores, but not significantly related to Gift Delay scores. Findings will be discussed in terms of the video deficit effect.