Liliia Terekhina 1, Tatyana Kotova 2, Alexey Kotov 1 1 Laboratory for Cognitive Research, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russian Federation 2 Cognitive Research Lab, Russian Academy for National Economy and Public Administration, Moscow, Russian Federation
The natural pedagogy approach (Gergely and Csibra, 2005) explains the social learning mechanism through the characteristics of human communication, a set of ostensive cues. However, in the further development of the child, the role of ostensive communication is expected to be played by other signals, not always in accordance with the order of communicative development (Kotova, 2016). We study which communicative signals are used sustainably by adults when interacting with young and preschool children, and whether this set is fixed in the course of development or not. Fourteen children in the 2-7 age range and their caregivers participated. Each adult should show his/her child how to use an object, then given him to repeat it on their own. The chosen object (e.g., a pipette with water) should be unknown to the child previously. Videos are annotated, the following annotation contains speech, gaze direction and manipulations. The results show that the older the children, the more available the complex verbal forms of communication become. At the same time, the principle of cues is maintained and consists in drawing the attention of the child to important details. When older children (4-7y.o.) did something wrong, adults reported the mistake with words and were less likely to correct it with their own hands, but for young children (2-3y.o.) adults do corrective manipulations. Thus, speech in communication with older children assumes the functions of those ostensive signals used in interaction with an infant (eye contact) or a young child (corrective action).
