Child Research | Welcome

What do children learn from others and how do children learn from others? These are the questions that drive much of the research in the Social Cognition Laboratory. Without question, children are adept imitators, from birth they copy facial expressions and by 24 months begin to copy actions in relation to the goals and intentions of the model. In our lab we are particularly interested in imitation learning, that is, how children acquire new and abstract information from others. Below are a number of questions we are pursuing:

Copying Motor-Spatial versus Cognitive Rules

These studies seek to understand the development of different imitation skills; specifically, studies seek to understand how children represent and copy different types of abstract information necessary for learning operational tasks such as tool-use. Using touch-screen technology, participating children are presented with ‘games’ that require them to copy abstract arbitrary motor-spatial patterns such as up-down-right as opposed to copying serial information such as copying a sequence like first-second-third. By comparing performance within individuals and across age groups and populations we hope to better understand how individual imitation skills develop and the psychological skills that underlie them. [PI: Subiaul]

Imitation Learning in Children with Autism

One of the core deficits that characterize children with autism are imitation learning difficulties. However, Subiaul and colleagues (2007) have reported in Cognitive Development that children with autism learn in a cognitive imitation paradigm. So why do children with autism under-perform in so many imitation tasks? Is the problem psychological or motor-spatial in nature? In our lab we are currently presenting children with autism a battery of imitation learning studies where they must copy a variety of simple rules (e.g., spatial, motor, serial/cognitive) in an effort to identify what most affects imitation learning in this populations. [PI: Subiaul, Bloomer-Fichter]

The Role of Agency-Attribution in Imitation Learning

A number of imitation researchers have presented children with a ‘ghost control,’ an imitation learning study where actions occur without human intervention. For example, a child might see a peg ‘magically’ move through the air and ‘intentionally’ land on a placeholder. In these studies, when children are given the peg, they tend to place it in the placeholder; showing learning. These results have been interpreted to mean that children learn and copy results independently of the model’s action (as in these studies there are no visible actions). However, in the Social Cognitive Lab we are currently testing the possibility that children learn in these strange circumstances because they impart agency and goal-directedness to the moving object. According to this view, children learn because they view the inanimate object ‘behaving’ as a goal-directed agent; not unlike a human model. [PI: Subiaul, Vonk, Rutherfod]

Learning from Others’ Mistakes

Recognizing and learning from others’ errors is fundamental to normal intellectual growth and development. We are currently pursuing a number of studies that present children with abstract motor-spatial (e.g., up-down-right) and cognitive (e.g., first-second-third) imitation problems where the model shows children only incorrect, only correct and a mixture of correct and incorrect responses. During testing we assess what children learn. [PI: Subiaul, Vonk, Okamoto-Barth]

Explaining Physical versus Social Dilemmas

These studies pursued in collaboration with M.D. Rutherford, Daniel Povinelli and Sarah Dumphy-Lelliiare an extension of published research by Povinelli&Dunphy-Lelii(2001) in the Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology. These studies compare how typically-developing children and children with autism reason about physical as opposed to social dilemmas. [PI: Subiaul, Rutherford, Povinelli]