Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-669899f699-swprf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-24T19:45:05.708Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

16 - Multiple motivations for imitation in infancy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 December 2009

By
Mark Nielsen  and
Virginia Slaughter
Edited by
Chrystopher L. Nehaniv  and
Kerstin Dautenhahn
Mark Nielsen
Affiliation:
University of Queensland, School of Psychology, Early Cognitive Development Unit, Australia
Virginia Slaughter
Affiliation:
University of Queensland, School of Psychology, Early Cognitive Development Unit, Australia
Chrystopher L. Nehaniv
Affiliation:
University of Hertfordshire
Kerstin Dautenhahn
Affiliation:
University of Hertfordshire
Get access

Summary

As the chapters in this book attest, during the last decade the study of imitation has become a topic of central importance through a diverse range of disciplines. There have been a greater number of controlled studies of imitation in non-human animals than ever before. Possible neural foundations of imitation have been identified. Encouraging progress has been made in developing imitation in constructed systems. Our understanding of the processes and mechanisms of imitation has been markedly advanced. Nonetheless, during this period most researchers have primarily focused on how imitation facilitates the acquisition of new skills or behaviours. In so doing, some important aspects of imitation have been neglected. In human development, infants imitate for a wide variety of reasons, both within and across different developmental stages and within and across different contexts. More specifically, for human infants imitation is an important form of pre-verbal communication that provides a means by which they can engage in social interaction. Our aim in this chapter is to provide an overview of the evidence that infants imitate not only to acquire new skills but also to engage socially with others, and this social engagement can itself take a number of different forms, with imitation being used flexibly as a means to various social ends.

Before going further a brief note on definition is warranted.

Type
Chapter
Information
Imitation and Social Learning in Robots, Humans and Animals
Behavioural, Social and Communicative Dimensions
 , pp. 343 - 360
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2007

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Book purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Abravanel, E. and Sigafoos, A. D. (1984). Exploring the presence of imitation during early infancy. Child Development, 55, 381–92.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Anisfield, M. (1991). Neonatal imitation. Developmental Review, 11, 60–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Asendorpf, J. B., Warkentin, V. and Baudonnière, P.-M. (1996). Self-awareness and other-awareness II: mirror self-recognition, social contingency awareness, and synchronic imitation. Developmental Psychology, 32, 313–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bakeman, R. and Adamson, L. (1984). Coordinating attention to people and objects in mother infant and peer infant interactions. Child Development, 55, 1278–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baldwin, D. A. and Baird, J. A. (2001). Discerning intentions in dynamic human action. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 5, 171–8.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Baldwin, J. M. (1894). Mental Development in the Child and the Race. New York: MacMillan.Google Scholar
Baldwin, J. M. (1897). Social and Ethical Interpretations in Mental Development. New York: MacMillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barnat, S. B., Klein, P. J. and Meltzoff, A. N. (1996). Deferred imitation across changes in context and object: memory and generalisation in 14-month-old infants. Infant Behaviour and Development, 19, 241–51.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Barr, R., Dowden, A. and Hayne, H. (1996). Developmental changes in deferred imitation by 6- to 24-month-old infants. Infant Behaviour and Development, 19, 159–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barr, R. and Hayne, H. (1999). Developmental changes in imitation from television during infancy. Child Development, 70, 1067–81.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bellagamba, F. and Tomasello, M. (1999). Re-enacting intended acts: comparing 12- and 18-month-olds. Infant Behaviour and Development, 22, 277–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Call, J. and Carpenter, M. (2002). Three sources of information in social learning. In Dautenhahn, K. and Nehaniv, C. L. (eds.), Imitation in Animals and Artifacts. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 211–28.Google Scholar
Carpenter, M., Akhtar, N. and Tomasello, M. (1998a). Fourteen- through eighteen-month-old infants differentially imitate intentional and accidental actions. Infant Behaviour and Development, 21, 315–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carpenter, M., Nagell, K. and Tomasello, M. (1998b). Social cognition, joint attention, and communicative competence from 9 to 15 months of age. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 63(4), Serial No. 255.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Field, T. M., Woodson, R., Greenberg, R. and Cohen, D. (1982). Discrimination and imitation of facial expressions in neonates. Science, 218, 179–81.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gallese, V., Fadiga, L., Fogassi, L. and Rizzolatti, G. (1996). Action recognition in the premotor cortex. Brain, 119, 593–609.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gergely, G., Bekkering, H. and Kiraly, I. (2002). Rational imitation in preverbal infants. Nature, 415, 755.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Guillaume, P. (1926/1971). Imitation in Children (2nd edn.). Menlo Park, CA: Benjamin/Cummings.Google Scholar
Hanna, E. and Meltzoff, A. N. (1993). Peer imitation in laboratory, home, and day-care contexts: implications for social learning and memory. Developmental Psychology, 29, 1–12.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hayne, H., Boniface, J. and Barr, R. (2000). The development of declarative memory in human infants: age-related changes in deferred imitation. Behavioral Neuroscience, 114, 77–83.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hayne, H., Herbert, J. and Simcock, G. (2003). Imitation from television by 24- and 30-month-olds. Developmental Science, 6, 254–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heimann, M. and Meltzoff, A. N. (1996). Deferred imitation in 9- and 14-month-old infants: a longitudinal study of a Swedish sample. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 14, 55–64.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Huang, C., Heyes, C. and Charman, T. (2002). Infants' behavioral reenactment of ‘failed attempts’: exploring the roles of emulation learning, stimulus enhancement, and understanding of intentions. Developmental Psychology, 38, 840–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jones, S. S. (1996). Imitation or exploration? Young infants' matching of adults' oral gestures. Child Development, 67, 1952–69.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Killen, M. and Užgiris, I. (1981). Imitation of actions with objects: the role of social meaning. Journal of Genetic Psychology, 138, 219–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Klein, P. J. and Meltzoff, A. N. (1999). Long-term memory, forgetting, and deferred imitation in 12-month-old infants. Developmental Science, 2, 102–13.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Legerstee, M. (1991). The role of person and object in eliciting early imitation. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 51, 423–33.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McCall, R. B., Parke, R. D. and Kavanagh, R. D. (1977). Imitation of live and televised models by children one to three years of age. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 425(5), Serial No. 173.Google Scholar
McKenzie, B. and Over, R. (1983). Young infants fail to imitate facial and manual gestures. Infant Behaviour and Development, 6, 85–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meltzoff, A. N. (1985). Immediate and deferred imitation in fourteen and twenty-four-month-old infants. Child Development, 56, 62–72.Google Scholar
Meltzoff, A. N. (1988a). Imitation of televised models by infants. Child Development, 59, 1221–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meltzoff, A. N. (1988b). Infant imitation after a 1-week delay: long-term memory for novel acts and multiple stimuli. Developmental Psychology, 24, 470–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meltzoff, A. N. (1988c). Infant imitation and memory: nine-month-olds in immediate and deferred tests. Child Development, 59, 217–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meltzoff, A. N. (1995). Understanding the intentions of others: re-enactment of intended acts by 18-month-old children. Developmental Psychology, 31, 838–50.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Meltzoff, A. N. and Moore, M. K. (1977). Imitation of facial and manual gestures by human neonates. Science, 198, 75–8.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Meltzoff, A. N. and Moore, M. K. (1992). Early imitation within a functional framework: the importance of person identity, movement and development. Infant Behaviour and Development, 15, 83–9.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Meltzoff, A. N. and Moore, M. K. (1995). Infants' understanding of people and things: from body imitation to folk psychology. In Bermúdez, J., Marcel, A. J. and Eilan, N. (eds.), The Body and the Self. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 43–69.Google Scholar
Meltzoff, A. N. and Moore, M. K. (1999). Persons and representation: why infant imitation is important for theories of human development. In Nadel, J. and Butterworth, G. (eds.), Imitation in Infancy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 9–35.Google Scholar
Mitchell, R. W. (1987). A comparative developmental approach to understanding imitation. In Bateson, P. P. G. and Klopfer, P. H. (eds.), Perspectives in Ethology. New York: Plenum Press, Vol. 7, 183–215.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mitchell, R. W. (1990). A theory of play. In Bekoff, M. and Jamieson, D. (eds.), Interpretation and Explanation in the Study of Animal Behavior. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, Vol. 1, 197–227.Google Scholar
Mitchell, R. W. (1994). The evolution of primate cognition: simulation, self-knowledge, and knowledge of other minds. In Quiatt, D. and Itani, J. (eds.), Hominid Culture in Primate Perspective. Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 177–232.Google Scholar
Moore, C. and Corkum, V. (1998). Infant gaze following based on eye direction. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 16, 495–503.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mundy, P. and Gomes, A. (1998). Individual differences in joint attention skill development in the second year. Infant Behavior and Development, 21, 469–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nadel, J. (2002). Imitation and imitation recognition: functional use in preverbal infants and nonverbal children with autism. In Meltzoff, A. and Prinz, W. (eds.), The Imitative Mind: Development, Evolution, and Brain Bases. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 63–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nadel, J., Guérini, C., Pezé, A. and Rivet, C. (1999). The evolving nature of imitation as a format for communication. In Nadel, J. and Butterworth, G. (eds.), Imitation in Infancy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 209–34.Google Scholar
Nielsen, M. (2006). Copying actions and copying outcomes: social learning through the second year. Developmental Psychology, 42, 555–65.
Nielsen, M. and Dissanayake, C. (2003). A longitudinal study of immediate, deferred, and synchronic imitation through the second year. The Interdisciplinary Journal of Artificial Intelligence and the Simulation of Behaviour, 1, 305–18.Google Scholar
Nielsen, M. and Dissanayake, C. (2004). Pretend play, mirror self-recognition and imitation: a longitudinal investigation through the second year. Infant Behavior and Development, 27, 342–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Perner, J. (1991). Understanding the Representational Mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Piaget, J. (1962). Play, Dreams, and Imitation in Childhood. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Prizant, B. M. and Duchan, J. F. (1981). The functions of immediate echolalia in autistic children. Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders, 46, 241–9.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Repacholi, B. M. and Gopnik, A. (1997). Early reasoning about desires: evidence from 14- and 18-month-olds. Developmental Psychology, 33, 12–21.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rhode, M. (1999). Echo or answer? The move towards ordinary speech in three children with autistic spectrum disorder. In Alvarez, A. and Reid, S. (eds.), Autism and Personality: Findings from the Tavistock Autism Workshop. Florence, KY: Taylor and Frances/Routledge, 79–92.Google Scholar
Rochat, P. (2002). Ego function of early imitation. In Meltzoff, A. N. and Prinz, W. (eds.), The Imitative Mind: Development, Evolution, and Brain Bases. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 85–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Slaughter, V. and Corbett, D. (in press). Differential copying of human and non-human models at 12 and 18 months of age. European Journal of Developmental Psychology, Special Issue on Social Cognition During Infancy.
Suddendorf, T. (1999). The rise of metamind: beyond the immediately present. In Corballis, M. C. and Lea, S. (eds.), Evolution of the Hominid Mind. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 218–60.Google Scholar
Suddendorf, T., & Busby, J. (2003). Mental time travel in animals?Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7, 391–6.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tomasello, M. (1988). The role of joint attention in early language development. Language Sciences, 11, 69–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tomasello, M., Carpenter, M., Call, J., Behne, T. and Moll, H. (2005). Understanding and sharing intentions: the origins of cultural cognition. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 28, 675–735.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tomasello, M., Kruger, A. and Ratner, H. (1993). Cultural learning. Behavioural and Brain Sciences, 16, 495–552.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tomasello, M. and Todd, J. (1983). Joint attention and lexical acquisition style. First Language, 4, 197–212.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Troseth, G. L., Saylor, M. M. and Archer, A. H. (2006). Young children's use of video as a source of socially relevant information. Child Development, 77, 786–99.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Užgiris, I. (1981). Two functions of imitation during infancy. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 4, 1–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wallon, H. (1934). Les origines du charactére chez l'enfant. Paris: Boivin and Co.Google Scholar
Want, S. C. and Harris, P. L. (2002). How do children ape? Applying concepts from the study of non-human primates to the developmental study of ‘imitation’ in human children. Developmental Science, 5, 1–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whiten, A. and Ham, R. (1992). On the nature and evolution of imitation in the animal kingdom: reappraisal of a century of research. In Slater, P. J. B., Rosenblatt, J. S., Beer, G. and Milinski, M. (eds.), Advances in the Study of Behaviour. New York: Academic Press, Vol. 21, 239–83.Google Scholar
Wicks-Nelson, R. and Israel, A. (2000). Behaviour Disorders of Childhood, 4th edn. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
Williams, J. H. G., Whiten, A., Suddendorf, T. and Perrett, D. I. (2001). Imitation, mirror neurons and autism. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 25, 287–95.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Yando, R., Seitz, V. and Zigler, E. (1978). Imitation: A Developmental Perspective. Oxford, England: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Zentall, T. R. (2001). Imitation in animals: evidence, function and mechanisms. Cybernetics and Systems, 32, 53–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×