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Biomedical subjects

E Abravanel

Publications and source records attributed to E Abravanel.

18 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1998

Observational learning and the use of retrieval information during the second and third years.

The authors report 2 cross-sectional studies dealing with observationally derived acquisition of serial and sequentially coordinated activities in children between 12 and 30 months. In Study 1, greater improvements in activity occurred at every age beyond 12 months for modeling than for control groups, demonstrating age-related advances in ability to use modeling in connection with these action classes. However, significant gains did not imply complete reconstruction from memory, which resulted most typically for fewer than 50% of children. Moreover, when sequential tasks were subdivided on the basis of task demands, somewhat greater observationally derived change was found for the class of constrained tasks than for free-standing tasks. Study 2 concentrated on serial task performance and the use of massive retrieval cues in the form of assembled stationary displays, to test the efficacy of such cues in helping children reproduce the serial activities they had observed. Again, children who witnessed modeling were better at reproducing serial assemblies than control-group children. The use of retrieval information, however, was noticeably lacking as late as 22 months, whereas substantial gains were made over the next 6 months. The outcome was supported by exploratory processing results for the 2 ages. Increased use of the cues by 28 months appears to reflect important developments in awareness of the uses to be made of retrieval information, as well as success in its utilization.

Attention↗
PubMed1997

Exploring the roles of peer and adult video models for infant imitation.

Research seeking to determine whether imitation of gestures is within the neonate's and young infant's competence has yielded discrepant findings. Some studies report imitation of at least one gesture, tongue protrusion, whereas others fail to find significant matching of even this action for infants aged 1 to 4 months. Videotaped presentations of a peer and an adult modeling tongue protrusions and mouth opening/closing were shown to infants with mean ages of 13 and 23 weeks in an attempt to test the efficacy of peer models and to free modeling from any potential bias. With both baseline and arousal controls to assess the significance of tongue protrusions and mouth openings to their respective models, no significant effects of modeling were discernible at either age in Study 1, Study 2 was conducted to address possible design limitations of the first investigation. Only one significant effect favoring an interpretation of imitative matching was obtained; it occurred at 12 weeks, following video presentations of tongue protrusions by an adult. This single effect may have been a chance result. Granting the two-dimensionality of the video image, imitative-like matching appears not to be engendered with great efficacy by a dynamic pattern that preserves characteristics of facial gestures, whether the gestures are modeled by an infant peer or by an adult.

Adult↗
PubMed1993

Observing and imitating the formation of object classes during the second year of life.

The developmental origins of overt object classification are still poorly understood, but one factor that may be informative and facilitative of classification during the second year is observing adults group similar objects. A pretest-posttest design with modeling and control groups was used to assess the impact of modeling on deferred imitation of groupings based on object similarity. Children at three ages (12, 18, and 24 months) observed an adult produce class groupings and alignments of objects. By 18 and 24 months, there was significant deferred imitation of object groupings. There was virtually no effect at 12 months. Moreover, only at 24 months were classified sets spatially aligned. The results indicate that observing adult classification will at least facilitate object grouping during the latter part of the second year, and that it may promote the use of spatial alignments as organizing devices or as modes of depicting object classes.

Child, Preschool↗
PubMed1991

Does object modeling elicit imitative-like gestures from young infants?

One interpretation of the evidence for early imitative-like matching of facial gestures is that the acts are elicited by stimulus properties, rather than constructed by the infant. Verification of this possibility requires presentation of object models to determine whether infants reliably respond to them with movement-matching gestures. Two object models, one simulating tongue movements and the other mouth opening/closing, were presented to younger infants (median age = 5 weeks) and to older ones (median age = 12 weeks) under systematically varied movement conditions. Additionally, a live model presented tongue protrusion and mouth opening gestures to the same infants. Findings of two studies were similar. At neither age was there reliable elicitation of facial gestures by either object model, which suggests that most infants were not imitating the object movements or responding to them in a way that verifies elicitation of facial matches by object presentation. Live modeling of tongue extensions, however, did increase the incidence of partial tongue protrusions among infants at 5 weeks, which supports previous research.

Attention↗
PubMed1991

Does immediate imitation influence long-term memory for observed actions?

Long-term memory for object-related information acquired observationally was studied among younger and older toddlers under two conditions of acquisition and retention: direct imitation followed by reproduction after a 10 min delay (delayed imitation), and deferred imitation. A principal aim was to determine whether direct imitation fosters a form of enactive representation that improves long-term memory, or whether such memory is influenced more by visual encoding factors. Tasks consisted of five simple action combinations or separations. Results indicated that post-test scores were higher under all three post-test conditions than under pretest. Likewise, post-test performance was higher than that of a comparison group that did not observe the target actions. The results overall indicate that direct imitation did not operate substantially to improve memory for the modelled acts. Children were able to encode and retain about as much from their visual pickup of the modeled acts as from feedback obtained through the process of imitation. This finding was especially true for the older children.

Discrimination Learning↗
PubMed1984

Exploring the presence of imitation during early infancy.

2 investigations of early imitative ability were conducted with cross-sectional samples of infants between 4 and 21 weeks. Study 1 involved 2 rounds of modeling 5 gestures to infants. In Study 2, the number of modeled gestures was reduced to 3, but each one was modeled many more times--for the duration of the infant's attention over a 3-min period. When frequencies of reproduction of a modeled act were compared against baseline frequencies and against average frequencies of the act during periods when other actions were modeled, several main results were obtained. First, the most general finding was that imitative-like matching of modeled gestures was the exception, not the rule, at all ages. Second, even where significantly greater frequencies of a gesture occurred during modeling than during control periods, it was always a partial and incomplete version of the modeled act that was reproduced, not a well-formed copy of the adult's gesture. Finally, where results were consistent with an interpretation of imitation, as with responses to tongue protrusion modeling, the effect was restricted to the youngest ages: 4-6 weeks. Given the restricted evidence for imitation, and the fact that neither linear nor curvilinear growth trends were apparent, the most appropriate explanation for the reproduction of tongue protrusions at the youngest age is to be sought in terms of a reflexive or fixed action pattern type of response.

Child Development↗
PubMed1976

Action imitation: the early phase of infancy.

The early phase of imitation was studied in children between 6 and 18 months by means of the presentations of 22 actions. Comparison groups were used to assess spontaneous production of actions modeled for the treatment samples. Aanalyses yielded 4 clusters of actions, with 1 cluster showing age and treatment versus comparison group effects and others failing to show both these effects. An important factor affecting imitation was the presence of objects. Actions with objects were imitated more than actions without objects. Measures of attention were found to correlate with imitation level, wheras latency was inversely related to imitation. The presence of sound as a variable that potentially influences imitation was studied, but results were inconclusive. Moreover, imitation and object concept performance were unrelated when the factor of age was controlled.

Age Factors↗