Young children are natural pedagogues

Young children are sensitive to ostensive cues (OC), a specific set of communication signals which denote a learning context. This endows human communication with a protocol - termed natural pedagogy - adapted to transmit knowledge. It remains unknown whether children spontaneously communicate in th...

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Autores principales: Calero, Cecilia Inés, Sigman, Mariano
Publicado: 2015
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Acceso en línea:https://bibliotecadigital.exactas.uba.ar/collection/paper/document/paper_08852014_v35_n_p65_Calero
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12110/paper_08852014_v35_n_p65_Calero
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spelling paper:paper_08852014_v35_n_p65_Calero2023-06-08T15:46:39Z Young children are natural pedagogues Calero, Cecilia Inés Sigman, Mariano Development Gestures Ostensive cues Pedagogy Teaching Young children are sensitive to ostensive cues (OC), a specific set of communication signals which denote a learning context. This endows human communication with a protocol - termed natural pedagogy - adapted to transmit knowledge. It remains unknown whether children spontaneously communicate in this protocol. Here, we show that children display a broad repertoire of ostensive signals during pedagogically relevant moments of their discourse. We introduce an experimental setup where an adult actor plays erroneously a simple inference game which the child has previously learned how to play. This naturally shifts the child from a student to a teacher's role in the educational dialog. In Study 1 (n= 31), we examine children's use of ostensive cues and gestures as they develop their explanations (3-5 and 6-8-years old). We demonstrate that all children use non-verbal behaviors specifically during moments of pedagogical relevance and the dynamics' use of ostensive signals change through childhood. In Study 2 (n= 16), the adult pupil minimizes all reception to non-linguistic OC and gestures. This resulted in a decrease of children's frequency of OC during pedagogical episodes but did not affect other gesturing behavior. In Study 3 (n= 15) we show that decreasing ostension during children's history of instruction does not decrease their own ostension while teaching. This rejects the hypothesis that children teach by simple imitation of their learning experience and showed instead, that they can diagnose the sources of the adult pupil's failure and adjust their own teaching accordingly. Together, these results demonstrate that children are spontaneously tuned in the emitter side of natural pedagogy. © 2015 Elsevier Inc. Fil:Calero, C.I. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales; Argentina. Fil:Sigman, M. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales; Argentina. 2015 https://bibliotecadigital.exactas.uba.ar/collection/paper/document/paper_08852014_v35_n_p65_Calero http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12110/paper_08852014_v35_n_p65_Calero
institution Universidad de Buenos Aires
institution_str I-28
repository_str R-134
collection Biblioteca Digital - Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales (UBA)
topic Development
Gestures
Ostensive cues
Pedagogy
Teaching
spellingShingle Development
Gestures
Ostensive cues
Pedagogy
Teaching
Calero, Cecilia Inés
Sigman, Mariano
Young children are natural pedagogues
topic_facet Development
Gestures
Ostensive cues
Pedagogy
Teaching
description Young children are sensitive to ostensive cues (OC), a specific set of communication signals which denote a learning context. This endows human communication with a protocol - termed natural pedagogy - adapted to transmit knowledge. It remains unknown whether children spontaneously communicate in this protocol. Here, we show that children display a broad repertoire of ostensive signals during pedagogically relevant moments of their discourse. We introduce an experimental setup where an adult actor plays erroneously a simple inference game which the child has previously learned how to play. This naturally shifts the child from a student to a teacher's role in the educational dialog. In Study 1 (n= 31), we examine children's use of ostensive cues and gestures as they develop their explanations (3-5 and 6-8-years old). We demonstrate that all children use non-verbal behaviors specifically during moments of pedagogical relevance and the dynamics' use of ostensive signals change through childhood. In Study 2 (n= 16), the adult pupil minimizes all reception to non-linguistic OC and gestures. This resulted in a decrease of children's frequency of OC during pedagogical episodes but did not affect other gesturing behavior. In Study 3 (n= 15) we show that decreasing ostension during children's history of instruction does not decrease their own ostension while teaching. This rejects the hypothesis that children teach by simple imitation of their learning experience and showed instead, that they can diagnose the sources of the adult pupil's failure and adjust their own teaching accordingly. Together, these results demonstrate that children are spontaneously tuned in the emitter side of natural pedagogy. © 2015 Elsevier Inc.
author Calero, Cecilia Inés
Sigman, Mariano
author_facet Calero, Cecilia Inés
Sigman, Mariano
author_sort Calero, Cecilia Inés
title Young children are natural pedagogues
title_short Young children are natural pedagogues
title_full Young children are natural pedagogues
title_fullStr Young children are natural pedagogues
title_full_unstemmed Young children are natural pedagogues
title_sort young children are natural pedagogues
publishDate 2015
url https://bibliotecadigital.exactas.uba.ar/collection/paper/document/paper_08852014_v35_n_p65_Calero
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12110/paper_08852014_v35_n_p65_Calero
work_keys_str_mv AT caleroceciliaines youngchildrenarenaturalpedagogues
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