Effects of exposure to a model on children's game behavior

Three factors were involved in this experiment, i.e., age (6-, 7-, and 8-year-old), instruction (problem, non-problem), and model (model, no-model), which constituted a 3×2×2 factorial design. The subjects (120 boys) were divided at random into 12 groups consisting of 10 boys. The Sorting Task and the Feltboard Task used by Yando, Seitz, and Zigler (1978) were utilized. A model showed each child both behaviors relevant and irrelevant to the problem solution involved in the games. The following were the major results. First, children imitated and recalled relevant behaviors more frequently than irrelevant ones. Secondly, the problem instruction and the relevant examples enhanced imitation in the Feltboard Task, but not in the Sorting Task. Finally, the spontaneous imitation of relevant examples was found to decrease with age, and about three-quarters of 7- and 8-year-old boys who took hints from the model could create various new plays.