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Most Indigenous peoples live in urban and regional locations across Australia and no longer speak their traditional languages fluently. Instead contact languages, creoles and dialects, are widely spoken. In many educational settings, educators may know little about the first languages of the Indigenous children they teach, and not recognise these as different languages or dialects. Consequently, these students may not be treated as second language learners of Standard Australian English (SAE) and their language learning requirements are not considered. From a sociocultural perspective, language is crucial to students' learning. In this paper, we quantitatively analyse the SAE learning needs of Indigenous primary school aged children in Far North Queensland using oral elicited imitation of simple sentences in SAE as a research method. Using one-way ANOVA, the results are compared with native monolingual SAE speakers showing significant differences between the two. This finding has important implications for classroom teaching practices and educational policies.

The main objective of this article is to analyse informal learning processes in the field of video games. As many teenagers are engaged in these kinds of practices, the big question is: How do teens learn to play video games? In most cases they do not learn to play video games at school or with their parents, and therefore it is necessary to map and analyse these informal learning strategies (ILS). The aims of this article are to identify the main ILS that teens apply as they acquire and improve their video game literacy, and to develop a series of categories for analysing and classifying these informal learning experiences. After briefly outlining the situation of ILS and teens' transmedia skills, in the context of a general reflection on information literacy (IL) and transmedia literacy (TL), the methodological aspects of research and fieldwork in eight countries is described. A taxonomy of ILS related to video game practices is also presented. The research team identified six modalities of ILS (learning by doing, problem solving, imitation, playing, evaluation and teaching) and expanded them with four main categories (subject, time, space and relationships) that contain a series of oppositions. This set of modalities, categories and oppositions should be considered as a first step in the construction of a set of analytical tools for describing and classifying ILS in the context of teens' video game experiences.

This study examines whether the Internet of Toys (IoToys) (de)limits children's make-believe play and whether the functionality and manipulatives offered by the IoToys serve as motivational pleasure (tactile, virtual and visual) for children to engage in make-believe play. Combining Piagetian and Vygotskian ideas of play as a unity of cognition and social context, we consider IoToys as a motivational conduit for children's symbolic actions that leads to make-believe play. Qualitative methodology was employed using observations of young children at home when interacting with IoToys (total n = 10 families) from England (n = 5 families) and Australia (n = 5 families). Data showed that children's interaction does not limit the development of their make-believe play as they engage in imitation schemata and create imaginative situations within and beyond the intended pre-programmed functions of the IoToy. To conclude, it is argued that instead of differentiating virtual and physical play, we should (re)think play with multimodal playscape lenses.

Specific features of adult linguistic input may play a larger, or smaller role, at different child ages, across different language outcomes, in different cohorts. This prospective, longitudinal study explored associations between the quantity and quality (i.e. diversity and responsiveness) of maternal linguistic input and child language. This study was derived from an Australian population-based intervention trial. Participants were mother-child dyads at risk of experiencing social adversity (n = 136). Home visits were conducted at 24 and 36 months. At the 24-month visit, mother-child free-play videos were collected. Seven aspects of maternal linguistic input were measured from videos: imitations, expansions, wh-questions, labels, word types, word tokens and mean length of utterance (MLU). Child language was assessed using a standardized measure at 36 months. Maternal MLU and imitations were associated with overall language and expressive vocabulary scores; wh-questions were associated with receptive language scores. By exploring quantity "and" quality, we can appreciate the differential contribution of adult linguistic input to early language abilities in different groups of children. Our findings highlight how imitations of early words/sounds and asking children wh-questions may foster expressive and receptive language development. These findings may be helpful to consider when selecting strategies for use in parent-implemented language promotion activities.

This study, generated from considerations of embodied cognition, observational learning, and cognitive load theory, investigated the effect of mimicking gestures on learning to play piano tasks. Fifty university students from an Australian University, with two different levels of piano-playing experience, were randomly assigned to one of the two different gesturing conditions in a 2 (gestures vs. no-gestures) x 2 (novice vs. more expertise) design. All groups viewed an animated video presentation of four musical scores being played on a piano with the hand motions visible, accompanied by the sounds of the notes played. Participants in the gesturing condition were required to gesture while watching the presentations, but in the no-gesturing condition, gesturing was prohibited. Test results indicated a significant learning advantage to gesturing with reduced cognitive load. It was also evident that the efficacy of gesturing was influenced by learner expertise and task complexity.

A growth in the popularity of remix culture has led to the phenomenon of people creating videos that explicitly imitate or copy an original work. In order to explore the potential educational value of the remake video phenomenon, we conducted a content analysis of 93 videos that were inspired by "Love Language," a sentimental narrative video that features the themes of budding romance and disability awareness. Some remake videos attempt to closely match the original work in both content and form. Other producers are inspired by the original work and create remakes that diverge considerably in content, format, and cinematograph. Using content analysis, we examined the ratio of imitation to originality for content, form, and cinematographic variables. Most remakes include careful imitation of narrative story elements, with evidence of originality found in the depiction of social relationships. Format and cinematographic codes reveal less strict imitation. The production of remake videos may enhance media literacy competencies by offering a means for young media makers to develop creative skills through strategic imitation.

Children hold strong ingroup biases from a young age, liking ingroup over outgroup members and preferring them as social learning models. Simultaneously, children are also highly prosocial--both in their own helping behaviors and their avoidance of those who behave antisocially. This study explores how children of 2 age groups (4-5 and 7-8 years) react when these biases conflict; that is, when children's ingroup behaves antisocially. Children were assigned to a group and given a premeasure of liking to assess ingroup bias. They were then shown videos of the ingroup behaving antisocially and the outgroup behaving prosocially (or neutral controls). Children were then given the opportunity to choose which group to imitate and whether they wanted to change groups and then again given a measure of liking. Results revealed that older children were highly sensitive to pro- and antisocial behavior; when their ingroup was antisocial they were less likely to imitate them, reported liking them less, and were more likely to want to change groups. In contrast, younger children imitated the ingroup and reported liking them more regardless of their behavior and actually reported wanting to change groups less when their group was antisocial. This demonstrates a clear developmental jump between younger and older children in their capacity to weigh multiple strands of information when making decisions, and in particular it highlights the emergence of strong prosocial concern that persists over a drive to affiliate with an ingroup.

This exploratory randomised controlled trial tested the effectiveness of a tablet-based information communication technology early intervention application to augment existing therapy with the aim of improving visual motor, imitation, language and social skills in young children with ASD who reside in regional areas. Fifty-nine participants were recruited and randomised to either a therapy-as-usual group or intervention group. With the exception of the expressive language subscale on the Mullen Scales of Early Learning, no significant between-group differences were recorded for visual motor, imitation, receptive language and social skills of participants between baseline and post-intervention. When all participants were pooled and measured over time, improvements were shown in receptive and pragmatic language and social skills; these gains were maintained, thus suggesting skill acquisition.

We examined the role of social motivation and motor execution factors in object-directed imitation difficulties in autism spectrum disorder. A series of to-be-imitated actions was presented to 35 children with autism spectrum disorder and 20 typically developing children on an Apple® iPad® by a "socially responsive" or "aloof" model, under conditions of "low" and "high motor demand." There were no differences in imitation performance (i.e. the number of actions reproduced within a fixed sequence), for either group, in response to a model who acted socially responsive or aloof. Children with autism spectrum disorder imitated the high motor demand task more poorly than the low motor demand task, while imitation performance for typically developing children was equivalent across the low and high motor demand conditions. Furthermore, imitative performance in the autism spectrum disorder group was unrelated to social reciprocity, though positively associated with fine motor coordination. These results suggest that difficulties in object-directed imitation in autism spectrum disorder are the result of motor execution difficulties, not reduced social motivation. [This paper was presented at the 2016 International Meeting for Autism Research.]

Approximately 10% of children with a speech sound disorder present with an inconsistent phonological disorder, characterized by inconsistent production of words across multiple trials. A number of studies have provided evidence of the efficacy of core vocabulary therapy for the remediation of this speech sound disorder with a dosage of two speech-language therapy sessions per week. The present study aimed to investigate if two variations of core vocabulary therapy under real world conditions were effective in improving consistency in the speech of children with inconsistent phonological disorder. Variation A was based on standard administration of core vocabulary therapy (with the addition of a third session per week) and Variation B involved one therapy session per week with a speech-language therapist and an imitation based home program delivered by caregivers. This effectiveness study involved five participants (four males, one female) with inconsistent phonological disorder. The ages of the participants ranged from 39 to 59 months at baseline. One child participated in Variation A and four children participated in Variation B. Changes in consistency of speech between baseline and post-therapy were analysed using the Wilcoxon signed-rank test. Consistency of speech improved significantly between and pre- and post-test assessment for four out of five participants treated with either variation A or B. These results suggest that core vocabulary therapy delivered once per week with a speech language therapist and using imitation home practice may be an alternative therapy option for children with inconsistent phonological disorder, with implications for the cost and time required. These findings also challenge our theoretical understanding of the locus of impairment in inconsistent phonological disorder. Given the small number of participants in the study, there is a need for replication of these research findings using a larger number of participants.

English has a word-minimality requirement that all open-class lexical items must contain at least two moras of structure, forming a bimoraic foot (Hayes, 1995).Thus, a word with either a long vowel, or a short vowel and a coda consonant, satisfies this requirement. This raises the question of when and how young children might learn this language-specific constraint, and if they would use coda consonants earlier and more reliably after short vowels compared to long vowels. To evaluate this possibility we conducted an elicited imitation experiment with 15 two-year- old Australian English-speaking children, using both perceptual and acoustic analysis. As predicted, the children produced codas more often when preceded by short vowels. The findings suggest that English-speaking two-year-olds are sensitive to language-specific lexical constraints, and are more likely to use coda consonants when prosodically required.

This study explored how overimitation and collaboration interact in 3- to 6-year-old children in Westernized (N = 48 in Experiment 1; N = 26 in Experiment 2) and Indigenous Australian communities (N = 26 in Experiment 2). Whether working in pairs or on their own rates of overimitation did not differ. However, when the causal functions of modeled actions were unclear, the Indigenous Australian children collaborated at enhanced rates compared to the Western children. When the causal role of witnessed actions was identifiable, collaboration rates were correlated with production of causally unnecessary actions, but in the Indigenous Australian children only. This study highlights how children employ imitation and collaboration when acquiring new skills and how the latter can be influenced by task structure and cultural background.

Purpose: Evidence from children's spontaneous speech suggests that utterance length and utterance position may help explain why children omit grammatical morphemes in some contexts but not others. This study investigated whether increased utterance length (hence, increased grammatical complexity) adversely affects children's third person singular "-s" production in more controlled experimental conditions. Method: An elicited imitation task with 12 Australian English-speaking children ages 2;9 (years;months) to 3;2 (M[subscript age] = 2;11) was conducted comparing third person singular "-s" production in 3-word and 5-word utterances, both utterance medially (e.g., "He 'sits' back"; "He 'sits' back and swings") and utterance finally (e.g., "There he 'sits'; That's the way he 'sits'") using a within-subjects design. Children were shown pictorial representations of each utterance on a computer and were invited to repeat 16 pseudorandomized prerecorded utterances. Acoustic analysis determined the presence/absence and duration of the third person singular morpheme. Results: Third person singular production was significantly lower utterance medially compared to utterance finally for the 5-word utterances and significantly lower utterance medially in the 5-word compared to 3-word utterances. Conclusion: These results suggest that increased utterance length results in significantly lower third person singular production, but only in the more articulatorily challenging utterance-medial position. Thus, morpheme omission is greatest at the intersection of grammatical and phonological complexity.

In language learning, there is much evidence to suggest that heritage language (HL) learners exhibit learning needs and profiles that are distinct from non-HL learners. In the case of Chinese language teaching in Victoria, this issue is particularly pronounced because of the loose eligibility criterion that divides students into the streams of Chinese First Language, Chinese Second Language and Chinese Second Language Advanced. This paper aims to address the issue of problematic learning environments that arise when these students are not allocated to the correct stream, which leads to unfair assessment results and intimidates non-HL learners. The paper will take a mixed-method approach with particular emphasis placed on an elicited imitation test conducted on a sample group of students and an analysis of past VCE results to examine the differences between the two groups of learners and to identify the challenges and complications of having both of them in one Chinese classroom.

This paper presents new data extracted from the National Survey of Jazz Instrumentalists and Vocalists. The survey was administered to 209 professional jazz musicians who resided and performed in Australia during 2009-2010. Presented here are five statistically significant characteristics which differentiate vocalists' experiences from other jazz musicians. These are: the singers' preference for learning by imitation, their use of chords to find starting notes, their reliance on aural feedback, their greater sense of personal risk in improvisation, and their desire to be comfortable when performing lyrics. The results are accompanied by suggestions as to how jazz educators may respond to the findings.

Purpose: Children acquire /-ez/ syllabic plurals (e.g., buses) later than /-s, -z/ segmental plurals (e.g., cats,dogs). In this study, the authors explored whether increased syllable number or segmental factors best explains poorer performance with syllabic plurals. Method: An elicited imitation experiment was conducted with 14 two-year-olds involving 8 familiar disyllabic target plural nouns, half with syllabic plurals (e.g., bus [right arrow] buses) and half with segmental plurals (e.g., letter [right arrow] letters). Children saw pictures of the target items on a computer and repeated prerecorded 3-word-utterances with the target word in utterance-medial position (e.g., "The buses come") and utterance-final position (e.g., "Hear the buses"). Acoustic analysis determined the presence or absence of the plural morpheme and its duration. Results: Children had more trouble producing syllabic plurals compared with segmental plurals. Errors were especially evident in the utterance-medial position, where there was less time for the child to perceive/produce the word in the absence of phrase-final lengthening and where planning for the following word was still required. Conclusions: The results suggested that articulatory difficulties--rather than a word length effect--explain later acquisition of syllabic plurals relative to segmental plurals. These findings have implications for the nature of syllabic plural acquisition in children with hearing impairments and specific language impairment. (Contains 3 tables and 5 figures.)

Teaching and learning piano poses challenges when the student is clinically blind. This article addresses the following question: What can be learned from a case study of teaching piano successfully to a student who is blind? The article has three purposes. The first is to document the achievements of a young student who met these challenges. The second is to investigate how an experienced teacher chose effective ways of describing and demonstrating music to meet the needs of her student. A third is to examine the language of teaching and learning between teacher and student using Tait's theory of language communication in studio music lessons. This article reports on the process of teacher and student in the journey that has led to the formation of a sensitive and gifted musician. (Contains 3 notes.)

Although picture-book reading is commonplace during infancy, little is known about the impact of this activity on learning. A previous study showed that 18- and 24-month-olds imitated a novel action sequence presented in a book that was illustrated with realistic color photos, whereas they failed to imitate from books illustrated with less realistic drawings. In the research reported here, we hypothesized that increasing infants' exposure to a picture book would increase learning from books illustrated with both color photos and drawings. Independent groups of 18- and 24-month-olds were exposed to a picture book either twice in succession or 4 times in succession. The results showed that, regardless of the iconicity of the illustrations, increasing the number of reading sessions significantly improved the infants' imitation scores, compared to age-matched, no-demonstration controls. The results are discussed in relation to representational insight and cognitive flexibility. (Contains 1 figure and 1 table.)

An imitation training procedure was employed in Australia with an 18-year-old echolalic female in an effort to enhance daily functioning. One hundred sentences in the following curriculum areas were taught: domestic, vocational, community, and leisure. Results are discussed in terms of imitation across curriculum domains and grammatical types. (JW)

• Explored imitation of causally opaque actions in two communities. • A typical WEIRD community and a remote indigenous community. • Pro/antisocial behavior did not impact imitation in either cultural group. • Indigenous children imitated at higher rates than WEIRD children. Extensive research has documented that the antisocial behavior of others influences children's perceptions of and behavior toward them. In general, children report liking antisocial agents less, allocate them fewer resources, and are less likely to help them. Despite this, no research to date has explored how antisocial behavior may influence another socially driven behavior—imitation. Moreover, no research has addressed this question cross-culturally. To explore this, children were shown groups behaving prosocially or antisocially and were subsequently given the chance to imitate causally opaque actions (employed to highlight their normative framework) performed by these groups. Children from two cultures in Australia were included in the sample: Brisbane, a medium to large metropolitan city, and Borroloola, a remote indigenous community. Results revealed no impact of prosocial or antisocial behavior on imitative actions in either culture. However, we did identify differences in imitation rates between communities. Specifically, children from Borroloola persisted with imitation at far higher rates than children from Brisbane, highlighting the need for further nuanced research to unpack cross-cultural differences in social learning proclivities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The "video deficit" is a well-documented effect whereby children learn less well about information delivered via a screen than the same information delivered in person. Research suggests that increasing social contingency may ameliorate this video deficit. The current study instantiated social contingency to screen-based information by embodying the screen within a socially interactive robot presented to urban Australian children with frequent exposure to screen-based communication. We failed to document differences between 22- to 26-month-old children's (N = 80) imitation of screen-based information embedded in a social robot and in-person humans. Furthermore, we did not replicate the video deficit with children imitating at similar levels regardless of the presentation medium. This failure to replicate supports the findings of a recent meta-analysis of video deficit research whereby there appears to be a steady decrease over time in the magnitude of the video deficit effect. We postulate that, should the video deficit effect be truly dwindling in effect size, the video deficit may soon be a historical artifact as children begin perceiving technology as relevant and meaningful in everyday life more and more. This research finds that observational-based learning material can be successfully delivered in person, via a screen, or via a screen embedded in a social robot., (Copyright © 2023 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Product-based television refers to programming that implicitly promotes toys to children in the guise of a television show. The aim of the present study was to examine how exposure to such programs might impact on one of the most important domains of young children's development: pretend play. Thirty-six preschoolers in Australia watched 1 of 3 different types of television program (product-based with action-adventure themes; product-based with educational themes; or non-product-based) and were given a range of product-based and non-product-based toys to play with. Contrary to expectation, program type had minimal impact on the overall frequency of pretend play children engaged in. However, compared to educational product-based programs and non-product-based programs, children who watched action-adventure product-based programs exhibited significantly less acts of novel pretense and significantly more acts of imitative pretense. Findings such as this are critical to the ongoing debate surrounding the regulation of television content aimed at children. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]