Infant Behavior & Development 37 (2014) 174–177

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Infant Behavior and Development

The early sociability of toddlers: The origins of teaching

Kiyobumi KawakamiUniversity of the Sacred Heart, 4-3-1, Hiroo, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo 150-8938, Japan

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:Received 18 October 2013Received in revised form 8 January 2014Accepted 20 January 2014Available online 14 February 2014

Keywords:ToddlersPerson-directed behaviorsTeaching

a b s t r a c t

Toddlers’ person-directed behaviors were recorded longitudinally in a naturalisticpreschool setting. An observer (O, the author) recorded children’s behaviors with an ICrecorder during play sessions. Seventeen children, as a group, were observed once a weekin 3 blocks of 7 weeks (21 total hours). Person-directed behaviors toward the observerincreased with each block. Toddlers’ teaching behaviors were classified precisely. Thisteaching classification should be the first event of the origins of teaching.

© 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

Humans are very sociable. Humans’ communication “is . . . cooperative in the sense that it is all about helping and sharingwithin the context of various kinds of common conceptual ground with other persons (Tomasello, Carpenter, & Liszkowski,2007, p. 718).” Toddlers, who are just learning about the social world, are very attuned to human social interactions. “Fromat least their first birthday infants are able to coconstruct with others the kinds of joint attentional frames (common ground)necessary for comprehending and producing cooperative communicative acts involving relevance inferences about com-municator intentions (Tomasello et al., 2007, p. 715). In this research, toddlers’ person-directed behaviors are analyzed innaturalistic settings.

In a reviews of teaching in nonhuman animals, Thornton and Raihani (2008) simplified the definition of teaching givenby Caro and Hauser (1992) as: (1) an individual, A, modifies its behavior only in the presence of a naïve observer, B; (2) Aincurs some cost, or derive no immediate benefit; and (3) as a result of A’s behavior, B acquires knowledge or skills morerapidly or efficiently than it would otherwise. Despite debates on the topic of teaching in nonhuman animals (Thornton &McAuliffe, 2006; Thornton & Raihani, 2008), the origins of teaching in humans has received less attention. Data on the earlyinstructional acts of toddlers will be presented here.

2. Method

2.1. Participants

At each session, 17 toddlers were observed (12 girls and 5 boys). At the beginning of the first session, children were 7–24months old (M = 15.12, SD = 5.33). Participants were recruited through their preschool and observed in their natural schoolsetting.

E-mail address: kawakami@u-sacred-heart.ac.jp

0163-6383/$ – see front matter © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.infbeh.2014.01.001

K. Kawakami / Infant Behavior & Development 37 (2014) 174–177 175

Table 1Teaching behaviors.

Type N Events

Explaining 19Declarative 6Commanding 1 When O put books in order, a girl (25 months) told O, “Books are there.”

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Playing 2 A girl (24 months) gave O a toy. O thought it was food, so he pretended to eat it. She said, “Don’t eat. It is an umbrella.”Altruistic 2 A girl (28 months) asked O to read a book for her friend (IO). “(Please read this book), because IO likes this!”

A girl (31 months) asked O after looking at her friend’s nose. “Wipe her nose with a tissue.”

.2. Materials

The observer (O), a middle-aged male, recorded children’s behavior toward him on a Sony ICD-UX523 recorder concealedn his chest pocket.

.3. Observational indexes

Through prior experience in the school, O determined potential categories for coding person-directed behaviors. Theim was to record toddlers’ behaviors directed toward O. The observational indexes were (1) Showing (SO): a child shows

an object, (2) Pointing (PO): a child points out something to O using her/his finger, (3) Vocalization (VO): a child saysomething to O, but O cannot understanding the meaning, (4) Verbalization (VE): a child says something to O, and O cannderstand the meaning, (5) Teaching (TE): a child teaches something to O, (6) Giving (GI): a child gives O something, (7)ouching (TO): a child touches O with his/her hand, (8) Slapping (SL): a child slaps her/his hand with a O’s hand, (9) ClingingCL): a child clings her/his body to O’s body, and (10) Sitting on O’s lap (LA). Illustrations of the observational indexes arehown in Fig. 1. Vocalization (VO) and Verbalization (VE) could be observed simultaneously with other indexes. TeachingTE) contained VE, but they were not counted in the VE category. During an observation, some toddlers showed repetitionf the same behaviors. However, each observational index was coded dichotomously for each observation.

.4. Procedure

The observer attended free play sessions once a week at a preschool in Tokyo, Japan.O attended the sessions for 7 weeks during 3 blocks: early summer, fall and winter. The early summer sessions will

e called the first session, the fall sessions will be called the second session, and the winter sessions will be called thehird session, respectively. These sessions occurred approximately 7 weeks apart. O played with toddlers but did not taken initiative role. The playroom was about 7 m by 7 m. Toddlers and 5/6 preschool teachers were in the room. O playedith children from 9 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. at each session. This research was conducted with fully informed permission of theesearch Ethics Committee of the Department of Psychology, University of the Sacred Heart.

For reliability, Vocalization and Verbalization in one session were checked by a developmental psychologist and comparedith O’s data. Observational reliabilities were 100% for both Vocalizations and Verbalizations.

. Results

One hour each day for 7 days in the first, second, and third sessions were analyzed, for a total of 21 h. The total number of male toddlers was small, soender differences are not reported.

.1. Developmental changes

All but one child, the youngest girl, directed at least one of the coded observational indexes to O during the sessions. The youngest girl often cried,hich O interpreted as stranger anxiety. Fig. 2 shows the developmental changes in the observational indexes across the observations. Total numbers of

ehaviors directed toward O across the three sessions grew gradually. In the first session, the Giving category had the highest incidence, but Verbalizationsrew dramatically afterward. The growth in Verbalizations is especially indicative of the typical development of toddlers.

.2. Teaching and giving

Teaching behaviors were classified in 5 categories: (1) Explaining: a child explains O something, (2) Declarative: a child declares O something, (3)ommanding: a child commands O to do something, (4) Playing: a child plays with O, and (5) Altruistic: a child asks O to do something for a friend. Table 1hows the total number of teaching behaviors recorded during the observations and some events.

In giving behaviors, one boy (16 months) and one girl (29 months) pretended to giving O something (air?), but did not give O a physical object.

.3. Individual development

Some toddlers directed many behaviors toward O, but others directed few. To address whether older children directed more behaviors toward O thanounger children, the total number of behavioral indexes coded for each child were compared with the age of each child. Spearman’s rank correlation wasot significant (r = .405, p = .120).

To address whether toddlers’ individual tendency to direct behaviors toward O was consistent or variable, the total number of behavioral indexesor each child in the first session was compared with those of the second session. Spearman’s rank correlation was significant (r = .702, p < .01). The total

176 K. Kawakami / Infant Behavior & Development 37 (2014) 174–177

1-2 Pointing ( PO ) 1-1 Showing ( SO )

1-4 Teaching ( TE ) 1-3 Vocalization ( VO ) / Verbalization ( VE )

1-6 Touching ( TO ) 1-5 Giving ( GI )

1-8 Clinging ( CL ) 1-7 Slapping ( SL )

1-9 Sitting on O’s lap ( LA )

Fig. 1. Observational indexes.

number of behavioral indexes for each child in the second session was compared with those of the third session. Again, Spearman’s rank correlation wassignificant (r = .613, p < .05). The child who directed behaviors to O the most was the same girl in the session 1, 2, and 3.

4. Discussion

Fig. 2 shows the development observed in this study. The clear growth trend indicates the reliable pattern of behaviorsobserved in this research. Giving is a very important early communicative behavior. Eibl-Eibesfeldt (1975) wrote, “Passing of

K. Kawakami / Infant Behavior & Development 37 (2014) 174–177 177

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Fig. 2. Developmental changes.

ood as a gesture of contact readiness can also be observed in small children. I recently observed this in a 3-year-old girl whoas a guest in our house for the first time (p. 476).” According to Lightfoot, Cole, and Cole (2013), some researchers classified

ffiliative behaviors in preschoolers as the following: look (glance, observe, look toward), signal (point, show, wave, talk,ffer, smile, take, play face), approach (walk to, run to, follow), and contact (touch, kiss, hug, caress). These are very similaro the observational indexes coded in this study.

Table 1 shows the indexes that represent the beginning of teaching. Explaining was observed in a 17 month-old girl. Thiss the beginning of teaching displayed in this research. Toddlers observed in this study showed more sophisticated teachinghan expected by the definition given by Caro and Hauser (1992). This study also shows children’s altruistic behaviors inatural settings. The altruistic teaching by one girl (28 month-old), who asked O to read a book for her friend, shows a “theoryf mind” at this young age (cf. Kawakami et al., 2011). More observations will be necessary to discuss the origins of teachingn toddlers.

Two children pretended to give O something instead of a physical object. Liszkowski, Schäfer, Carpenter, and Tomasello2009) showed that 12-month-old children pointed at absent entities. Two children in this research used absent entities inheir play.

The trends of individual development observed in this study show that person-directed behaviors are not influenced byalendar ages as much as by personality traits. The increase in behavioral indexes between sessions 1 and 2 and sessions 2nd 3 were statistically significant. These data confirm the validity of the methods used in this study.

cknowledgements

The author would like to thank Keiko Teramura, Keiko Watanabe, Jun Nakamura, Jacqueline Mast and Takeshi Kishimoto.nd the author wishes to express his appreciations to the toddlers for their help.

eferences

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iszkowski, U., Schäfer, M., Carpenter, M., & Tomasello, M. (2009). Prelinguistic infants, but not chimpanzees, communicate about absent entities. Psycho-

logical Science: 20., 654–660.hornton, A., & McAuliffe, K. (2006). Teaching in wild meerkats? Science: 313., 227–229.hornton, A., & Raihani, N. J. (2008). The evolution of teaching. Animal Behavior: 75., 1823–1836.omasello, M., Carpenter, M., & Liszkowski, U. (2007). A new look at infant pointing. Child Development: 78., 705–722.