In one example, children twelve, fifteen, and eighteen months old were shown either a live person or a person on TV demonstrating some actions with puppets.1 The researchers evaluated whether the children could repeat the action either in the moment or twenty-four hours later. In all three age groups, when kids watched an actual person doing the action, some of them were able to replicate it a day later. The video demonstration was much less successful—the twelve-month-olds learned nothing, and the older kids learned much less than from seeing a live person do it.
