Around The Globe

Infants' Conditioned Responses

Teachers know well how difficult it can be to stop students from doing something their parents reward, like yelling out answers to questions. The reinforcement the children receive at home can overwhelm the teachers' efforts. Heimann and Meltzoff studied learning in nine-month-old United States and Swedish infants, and discovered parents' conditioning can have powerful effects, even on babies.

The researchers showed the infants a motion they could make with a new toy, such as pressing a button, distracted the babies for ten minutes, and then measured how many times the infants made that motion in twenty seconds. Both the U.S. and the Swedish infants imitated the researchers, despite the delay. However, the Swedish babies took 30 seconds to make their response, as opposed to 20 seconds for the U.S. babies. U.S. infants may be faster because parents in the United States tend to be "bouncy," exaggerating their voices and motions more when they speak to children than parents in Sweden, where adults value being cautious and reserved. The infants in the study exhibited behavior that would be reinforced by their parents, and responded to the laboratory stimuli the same way they responded to events at home.